


The Protean Charm

by terri_testing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, non-explicit reference to violence and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 08:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1681868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terri_testing/pseuds/terri_testing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Truth is slippery. Mutable. You have to hold tightly to what is real while everything around it shifts shape …. </p><p>Post-war, Neville and Luna work with their former headmaster to clear Draco Malfoy’s fair name and spring him from Azkaban.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

*  
A/N: Many thanks to Mary_j_59 and Oryx_leucoryx for beta-reading this. Remaining flaws are my fault; I’m sometimes trainable, but not always. And, of course, it all belongs to JKR.

*  
Prologue:

“The Vow works against us here, Narcissa,” Snape roused himself to whisper. “They say—they have said, to my face!—that I’m still bound … to protect Draco from harm…. They say that I can no longer,” his voice grated, died, and resumed, “even detect how I’m being influenced. As though I lost … my mind with my magic!”

He started to cough; the coughing brought blood again. Narcissa held the basin with her own hands, though that was a house-elf’s task. Then she fed him the waiting doses and asked, “Do you need Madam Pomfrey, Severus?”

He shook his head minutely and closed his eyes.

Eventually the man gathered the strength to rasp, “All that I can really point to… is that Draco served as a brilliant object lesson… in what it’s _really_ like… to catch the Dark Lord’s eye.”

Narcissa winced and looked away.

Severus paused for another breath. “Do you realize that of all the children left at Hogwarts, only … Goyle and Crabbe… actually tried to fight for the Dark Lord? But I have no proof…. Whereas Draco’s crimes were public. And that last exploit of his—” His hands worked restlessly. “I don’t know … what the boy thought he was doing …. And it looked… far too much like what the Weasley boy said … that Draco was trying to get back in …back in to the Dark Lord’s favor … by betraying them.”

The fair woman swallowed and said. “I’ve heard what else they say. That having killed partly to protect my son, you wouldn’t cavil now at lying to do so. “

The dark head lifted a fraction; the man started to snort. The sound cut off with a gasp of pain. After a moment, he whispered. “They’re right. I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment. Not if it would work…. But it doesn’t…. They won’t listen to me, Narcissa.”

He sank back, concentrating on breathing for a time.

“They are willing to absolve me … because I’m so evidently de-fanged… and because both Potter and … and, and, the portrait … support me. And because there is proof of my actual actions…. But absent such … well-placed defenders… and absent proof—I may believe all I wish that Draco had come to, to … desire the Dark Lord’s downfall.”

Severus met Narcissa’s bleak gaze; his eyes fell first.

He rasped, “Hell, Potter himself suspects that … Draco was unhappy in His service! But I cannot prove it to the Wizengamot—no more than the Carrows … could have proved it to the Dark Lord… had they ever had the wit to suspect the truth.”

Severus drew another breath, another. He said finally, “I’m sorry, Narcissa.”

Breathing was no small matter, not something to be done without due concentration. Snape concentrated.

The noise of magical construction and ward-weaving drifted up through the opened window. Severus had pointed out the dangers of that window to Poppy yesterday; she had tsked at him for paranoia, thanked him, and promptly changed her wards to compensate. Poppy’s domain was inviolate; only the headmistress herself could override the matron here.

And Poppy persisted in dedicating a private room and her valuable time to caring for a spent carcass.

No one entered this room save at Poppy’s will. Severus, still the spy, had listened to the two women’s terse conversation outside his door. Poppy had admitted Narcissa without a single question on her side.

Severus was distantly glad that Narcissa wasn’t groveling on the floor as she had at Spinner’s End—was it only two years back? But back then there had been some help, however inadequate, that Snape could offer. Now, he had no power to protect anyone.

Narcissa finally stirred from her own reflections.

“Severus, please…,” she begged.

Snape flinched.

He couldn’t even help the children now.

He turned his head away and shut his eyes.

********************************************************************************************

Neville snorted. He accidentally inhaled toast crumbs and started coughing. This morning’s Daily Prophet was lauding the Ministry for its swift justice. Of course, the paper conceded, the Ministry was starting with the open-and-shut cases: those that were merely a matter of listing the crimes and pronouncing sentence, to satisfy the formalities. It would be much trickier, the article suggested, when the Ministry tried those who could plead coercion of various sorts.

Trickier, yes. Neville snorted again.

Neville would not have attended any of the trials had he thought only of what _he_ wanted. But as the leader of Dumbledore’s Army, the formal Hogwarts resistance, he was summoned as a witness for the prosecution a few times. Not that many students had actually managed to _commit_ any crimes during the school year except in the Carrows’ classes; the headmaster’s discipline had been too harsh for that. The long-standing, long-ignored, rule “No magic in the corridors” had, for once, been ferociously enforced. Only in retrospect could Neville see how much that had protected them all; at the time he had thought it more of Headmaster Snape’s hated tyranny.

And it seemed that what had been done in classes at the Carrow’s urging would not be investigated further, at least for now. That one fifth-year Ravenclaw’s suicide might have had something to do with that decision.

Still, Neville’s testimony was required in a few cases. Draco Malfoy’s, for one. Neville grimly attested to Malfoy’s swaggering, his proud avowals of belonging to the Death Eaters, his open awe and fear of his master, his taunting of other students, and his boasts about how close he had managed to come to fulfilling his ‘task’.

The court didn’t ask Neville about the rumors that had filtered even to the Gryffindors, that Malfoy had been punished, severely, for his final loss of nerve.

That was hearsay.

Neville could never remember afterwards just what he’d said. Nor could he remember more than snatches of the rest of Malfoy’s trial.

“Prisoners may not speak save in direct answer to a question, Mr. Malfoy.”

“Speaking for clemency, Harry Potter.”

Harry, shifting uncomfortably, began, “Well, fair is fair. His mother did save my life, even if it was from selfish motives, and Malfoy couldn’t bring himself to kill the headmaster when it came to it....”

Ron’s counterstatement followed. Ron glared at Harry throughout his testimony, not at the elders. “I know Harry wants to be all noble and merciful like Professor Dumbledore would have liked, but fair IS fair. Malfoy never repented of joining the Dark side; he just discovered that his stomach wasn’t strong enough for Avada Kedavra! Being gutless isn’t the same as feeling sorry. And if he was reluctant to identify us at Malfoy Manor, still, he finally did. And he more made up for that little weakness by trying to capture us in the Room of Requirement when we were looking for the diadem Horcrux! Obviously, if he repented, it was of having not fingered us before. We saved his worthless life, twice. I think that’s as much mercy as he should get, and a lot more than he deserves!”

Neville did remember the end clearly. He had watched Draco Arrogant-Slytherin-Malfoy, the bane (besides Snape) of his first year, as the speaker summed, “Prisoner, we find that your unwillingness to perform the Avada Kedavra Curse and your reluctance to identify Harry Potter when he was brought to your house as a captive mitigates, but neither excuses nor erases, your other offenses. You conspired to commit murder. Your murder attempts caused grievous injury and could have caused death to your fellow students Katherine Bell and Ronald Weasley. You successfully smuggled Death Eaters past the Hogwarts wards, which resulted directly in the death of Albus Dumbledore, the permanent disfigurement of William Weasley, and sundry injuries to students and to defenders of the school. You openly supported Tom Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort. And you performed Dark spells in Riddle’s service including, but not limited to, the Imperius and the Cruciatus Curses. The gravity of these offenses merits life imprisonment in Azkaban.”

The chief witch of the Wizengamot paused to stare forbiddingly at the mute prisoner. He refused to look up at her; she finally continued, “Harry Potter himself has asked for clemency, pleading the mercy offered you by Albus Dumbledore and the Life Debt Potter owes your mother. In view of this, we ask the court to commute your life sentence to twenty years in Azkaban. Those in favor, raise their hands.”

The room rustled like the Forbidden Forest at night as the voting members raised their hands. Neville heard a snakelike hissing, “Off too easy…. Life sentence!”

“Those opposed, raise theirs.”

Many of the hissers raised their hands; the vast room was almost silent but for their rustling.

The prisoner had not spoken, save to answer yes or no, tonelessly, since the third time the court had cut him off when he tried to add something. Now Malfoy roused himself to ask, his grey eyes glassy with fear, “Is Azkaban being guarded by Dementors again?”

“Are you afraid of being made to remember your attempt to murder your headmaster, Mr. Malfoy? Or is it your failure you fear to remember?”

The thin body straightened. “If you can possibly imagine that I don’t remember everything perfectly anyhow, then you’re a fool, madam. With respect.”

The Chief Witch flushed in anger. “You deserve Dementors, Mr. Malfoy. But in fact we have not accepted them back as guards. Be grateful, and remember well in their absence.”

Pale lashes shuttered the chilled gray eyes, and Malfoy stopped responding to words. The golden manacles released him, and rough hands tugged him to his feet. He responded to them well enough.

Neville didn’t have to stay for the whole of Parkinson’s or Goyle’s trials; the court allowed him to leave after he’d given his testimony.

After all, the verdicts were in no doubt.

Neville read Skeeter’s report and thrust the paper aside.

*

Madam Pomfrey looked at Neville and Luna, her expression unwelcoming. Neville was glad of Luna’s support; he didn’t understand why he was driven to visit the headmaster, but Luna hadn’t so much as blinked when he’d suggested it. But then, Luna didn’t seem to blink as much as most people did.

 

Most of the other serious long-term cases had been moved out to St. Mungo’s, and most of those with lesser injuries had been healed by now. There were only a few beds occupied on the public ward, and none was from Dumbledore’s Army. The few Army members who were still recuperating were at St. Mungo’s; Neville had visited them yesterday.

 

Rumor said that Madam Pomfrey had been memory-charmed, this last year, by Snape himself, because she had started noticing that students punished directly by the headmaster were never hurt quite as badly as she would have predicted. If so, she’d made a good recovery. She seemed her usual bustling, busy, and impervious self.

Rumor said too that the Ministry had suggested moving the former headmaster to St. Mungo’s, for formal evaluation and treatment, but no one could get either Madam Pomfrey or the acting headmistress to concur. And no one, apparently, could remove him from Hogwarts without their consent.

 

Neville and Luna seemed to have interrupted Madam Pomfrey in mid-inventory of her stores; a parchment and quill hovered in midair before an open cabinet while she looked at them impatiently.

 

Neville could well imagine that the stores of the Hospital Wing might recently have been depleted.

 

Madam Pomfrey stared at them in stony silence.

 

Well, what else would they be _here_ for?

 

But Madam Pomfrey made them ask. Luna did so blithely. “We’re here to visit with the headmaster.”

 

“He’s not strong, you know. He sees few people,” Madam Pomfrey answered repressively,

 

Luna smiled at her. “Well, we’re only two, Madam Pomfrey. That’s few.”

 

Madam Pomfrey frowned. “He’s probably resting now, and he needs his rest. When he wakes, I can ask if he wants company.” _But I doubt that he does, least of all yours,_ crackled in the air about them.

 

Neville admired Madam Pomfrey’s ability to communicate nonverbally; it was as good as Snape’s, really, if you looked at it dispassionately. Though Snape tended to be more terrifying; well, Madam Pomfrey didn’t have quite the need to terrorize that the headmaster had had. To intimidate, yes, and she managed that quite nicely.

 

But Luna, unlike Neville, was hard to either terrorize or intimidate; she seemed generally not quite to understand how she was expected to react. Her silvery eyes now held the matron’s as she said softly, “Who he _wants_ to see and who you should let in to see him might well be quite different.”

 

After a moment Madam Pomfrey shifted her shoulders slightly. Without actually giving way, she granted them access to the room guarded behind her. Neville’s mouth went dry.

Drier.

Neville had confronted that man for eight months as Neville’s most hated and feared adversary—it’s not like Neville had then met the Dark Lord. So why should it be harder now that Neville knew the truth? Luna drifted through the door, and Neville trudged in after her.

 

The familiar hospital bed, the form lying motionless upon it, told Neville at once why this was harder. Black hair hung lank about the gaunt face. Snape’s hands were thin, waxy, against the white, coarse hospital linens. Snape’s nose stood out sharply against his hollowed cheeks.

 

But worse was the way the man seemed smaller, diminished, without his familiar disguises of billowing black robes and Neville’s hatred.

 

Had the gaunt form only raised itself, mute, hopeful, and confused, and offered Neville a Drooble’s wrapper, the resemblance would have been complete.

 

Instead Neville’s eyes snagged on the dark wand sitting innocuously on the bedside stand.

 

If the man turned his head a fraction he could see it; if he reached his hand out he could touch it. But the wand wasn’t in his line of sight, and it wasn’t in his grasp.

 

That was worse, the worst of all: seeing Professor Snape disarmed.

 

Neville made a small sound in his throat.

 

It woke the man. Snape floundered momentarily on the narrow bed and then registered the intruders.

 

Neville realized, unnerved, that once no one could have entered a room without that wizard noticing, however exhausted or ill he might have been.

 

However, Snape’s eyes, once they’d focused, were as black and unfathomable as ever, although the flash was gone from them. The former headmaster rasped, his voice barely more than a whisper, “Miss Lovegood. Mr. Longbottom. This is an unanticipated … honour.”

 

Once—a week ago?—his voice would have snapped out the last word.

 

Luna skipped forward. One wave of her wand raised the head of Snape’s bed so he didn’t have to lift himself to watch them; another conjured a chair for herself. Neville winced a little at her unconcerned use of magic; it seemed a little insensitive, given Snape’s circumstances. Luna perched rather than sat on the chair, knees drawn up and her chin resting on her crossed arms, smiling at her former headmaster.

 

The man’s mouth and fingers tightened slightly. He hadn’t glanced at the bedside table and his lost wand. He said listlessly, “I assume that you have … a reason for this intrusion?”

 

Luna said blithely, “Well, to thank you mostly. For protecting us so well. And to ask if there’s anything we can do for you now, or help you with.”

 

Was _that_ what they were there for? Neville was glad to have that finally cleared up. And he was glad, very glad, that Snape hadn’t been looking at _him_ when Luna came out with that statement.

 

The diminished man in the bed stared at Luna for a moment. “My protection… such as it was… was all too limited. As you two in particular can well attest.” A muscle jumped in his cheek as he looked away from them. It seemed that he shut his eyes, though Neville couldn’t see for sure.

 

Neville’s scars announced themselves, twanging—on cheeks, chest, hands. He turned his head slightly to look at the pale slash running from Luna’s cheekbone to her chin.

 

Luna leaned forward and said, “That’s one of the few things I couldn’t figure out, actually. They took me straight from the Hogwarts Express, of course, when I was foolish enough to give in to my longing to see my father at midwinter. They didn’t take me from under your protection. They never, ever, dared take anyone straight from Hogwarts. Even Neville, here, when they finally figured out he was the head and heart of the student resistance, they didn’t dare take him from you directly, sir—they tried to make him turn himself in!”

 

Her voice turned coaxing, soft, the way one might speak to a half-tamed Tentacula. One which _wanted_ to be domesticated, really, if one would just help it out a bit, give it a little encouragement, a nice pruning and some well-rotted dragon dung, and s soothing voice accompanied by smoothly-moving gloved impervious hands—

 

“How did you do it, sir?” Luna coaxed. “I spent hours in the Malfoy basement trying to figure out how someone could work it, and I just couldn’t. It was nice to have a puzzle to work on, but now I want to hear the solution. Most of what you did makes perfect sense in retrospect, but I couldn’t see how you managed that one. Keeping your supposed master from just snatching a misbehaving student out from under your hand for punishment. It’s not like there weren’t plenty of us misbehaving. Yet Mr. Riddle never dared to snatch us. How did you manage that?”

 

Neville and Snape both stared at Luna; she beamed at the former headmaster admiringly, as though he were a cutting she had gathered with great difficulty and was now delighted to see root. She continued, “I suppose it’s sort of a craft secret and you shouldn’t tell me, but please, won’t you anyhow? Now that it can’t make a difference for protecting your students? I’ve been wondering for so long, and it’s been driving me crazy that I couldn’t figure it out. You know how we Ravenclaws get when we can’t solve a puzzle.”

 

The headmaster’s frowning eyebrows relaxed a trifle. Luna hopped off her chair and patted Snape’s motionless hand. “I won’t tell a soul if you tell me. Word of a Ravenclaw—and Rowena must have torn her hair out when you decided to sort to Slytherin instead of our house. And you _know_ that Neville can be trusted. Please? Just that one thing? Just that one? How did you do it?”

 

The man stared incredulously at Luna’s hand petting his. He grated finally, “Through others. Always … always, through others, other … Death Eaters, or others in position… to state an opinion and be heard.” He paused for a breath; Luna leaned a little closer. “The Confundus Charm, and variants…. I never let my true—the actions I wished taken—be traceable to me. Others made the arguments.” The headmaster closed his eyes and whispered, “That it would make … the Dark Lord … look foolish, weak, if he paid … too much obvious attention to mere schoolchildren…. That was _my_ job. That’s what I was here for.”

The headmaster paused again to breathe. “And that if he took children… from the school… it couldn’t be hushed up…. Their fellows, the other children … would know if they disappeared without notice, and I … the headmaster … couldn’t prevent speculation from running rampant. The headmaster could, however, himself… apply pressure on the children if need be. No need for Voldemort or other Death Eaters to … sully their dignity … by taking notice of … mere _children. “_ The headmaster suddenly opened his eyes wide and met Neville’s, baring his crooked teeth in a malicious grin.

 

Neville involuntarily grinned back, lifting his head. _Mere children?_

 

The headmaster straightened slightly and said a little louder, “I said none of this, never…. _I_ merely sat back, smiled, and assured the Dark Lord that I would obey his will.”

 

Neville’s eyes crossed slightly at the thought of Professor Snape smiling crookedly at Old Snakeface.

 

He undoubtedly had, too.

 

After a moment the faint touch of self-satisfaction vanished from the professor’s face and he added, “I didn’t realize … until too late …that the holidays … left such a loophole. And I didn’t—I hadn’t—I had expected the family pressure to apply … only one way, which was, in retrospect, a rather—significant—failure of imagination.” His eyes shifted toward Neville momentarily.

 

Neville said hesitantly, “I don’t quite see how you could have predicted that they’d try to use my Gran to control me, sir. Or what you could have done about it if you had.”

 

The man’s hands moved restlessly. “I _should_ have predicted… my duty to….”

 

Luna shook her head. “So you blame yourself because there were things that not even Headmaster Snape could figure out how to control? As to how you worked it—I take it back, sir. You could never have been a Ravenclaw; Rowena would have thought of much of it, but she couldn’t have pulled it off. Salazar can have you!”

 

She let go of the professor’s hand to pat his cheek instead, then settled back in her conjured chair, her fingers again on his wrist. “Thank you again, and thank Salazar, that one of his best was here to protect us.”

 

The professor closed his eyes and was silent for a time. But his cheeks had flushed slightly. Eventually he opened his eyes and said coolly, “You’re bearing in mind, Miss Lovegood, that the threat … from which I endeavored to protect you … came from another of Salazar’s ‘best’?”

 

Luna had been staring out the open window; now her vague silver eyes re-focused on the professor. “Oh, are you talking about all that nonsense that Mr. Riddle spouted about being the Heir of Slytherin? Like Harry was supposed to be, my first year?” Her unrestrained giggles were infectious; Neville smiled unthinkingly, and even Professor Snape’s mouth relaxed a trifle from its grim line.

 

When she’d finally suppressed her giggles, Luna said very soberly, “I suppose that Mr. Riddle did take that stuff a bit seriously, don’t you think, Professor Snape? I shouldn’t laugh, really; He probably so wanted it to be true. Which is sad, really; being so petty that you can imagine that Slytherin would have left a basilisk in order to harass Muggleborns a thousand years later. What makes it even sillier is that basilisks are one of the magical creatures that can’t tell Muggles from witches, or even humans from other warm-blooded animals, whereas there are hundreds of things that can hunt based on magical status. Or on blood ties. Now if Salazar had left a Nunkileff, at least it could maybe have been trained to discriminate. Between descendents of the old families and everyone else, at least, given how hopelessly inbred we older families mostly are. A Nunkileff could have been trained to hunt non-Black-relatives, for instance, and it would have almost always picked on Muggleborns by default.”

Neville blinked. Nunkileffs? Neville wasn’t anything like as good on magical beasts or beings as plants, but…. He found himself trading a glance with Snape, who shook his head slightly in baffled agreement.

Luna continued, “I should think the Basilisk was really there to guard the foundations for us, and of course Salazar’s own chamber; have you found anything yet to replace it? I expect Hagrid could help, if you haven’t yet tended to the matter.”

Snape stared at Luna again; she gazed back limpidly. She said, “Given the terrain it needs to cover, a basilisk might really be the most suitable choice. Don’t you think, Professor Snape?”

Snape swallowed. “I very sincerely doubt … that the re-introduction of a basilisk … would widely be seen as beneficial, Miss Lovegood…. Whatever you believe Slytherin’s original reasoning to have been.”

“Well, it’s your decision, of course, if you think something else might be more suitable.”

Snape blinked at that and opened his mouth to answer her, clearly nonplussed.

Neville could have warned him, of course. Instead, he unobtrusively moved a step back so that he could more easily watch both faces.

Snape said finally, “ _My_ decision, Miss Lovegood? I think that I fail to understand you.”

“Well, you’re the headmaster. Who else’s decision would it be? Though I suppose it would be polite to discuss it first with the Board of Governors, you’re quite right to consider that.” Luna nodded in benign approval of Snape’s display of courtesy.

Neville and Snape choked in approximate unison.

“And you should first establish what exactly was the threat that Salazar’s Basilisk was guarding us from, I agree. Goblin invasions, don’t you think? I suppose I’m running ahead a bit. You’re quite right, Headmaster; a different monster might be better suited now, really. I expect you have to consider all that.” Luna nodded again, firmly.

Snape’s and Neville’s eyes met again momentarily.

As Neville had grown to know Luna more intimately over the last year, he had grown more familiar than he liked with that inevitable moment in their conversations when Neville would feel as though he had been trampled by one of Luna’s Crumple-Horned Snorkacks—a massive, wholly imaginary, and utterly unavoidable creature. He felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for Professor Snape.

Professor Snape tried one of the more obvious responses. One of the wrong ones, unfortunately. “Miss Lovegood, Professor McGonagall is headmistress.”

Neville winced involuntarily; the professor should really have known better.

Luna riposted, deadpan, “Acting. And temporary. The authority is yours.”

Snape closed his eyes again and ground out, “The headmaster of Hogwarts cannot be a Squib!”

A good, game try, but entirely ineffective against Luna, judged Neville.

Luna responded, “Well, but you are. That can’t be helped at this point. I expect that you meant it for the best at the time, really. I imagine that you’ll have to learn to work through others, now, instead of using your own magic.”

She tilted her head and added helpfully, “Fortunately you’ve always been extremely good at manipulating people.”

Neville flinched at that, and Professor Snape opened his eyes again to stare.

Luna smiled upon the both of them. “I do think, sir, that you should figure out what Salazar’s basilisk was protecting us from, to see if another one is really the best option now. I can appreciate that you haven’t really had the time this last year, with all of your concerns with Mr. Riddle, and Harry, and protecting us, but it really needs to be done. And if we do need another basilisk, you should get Hagrid to start work on it soon. I’m sure he’d love to hatch one for you, if you asked nicely.”

Snape opened his mouth and shut it with a snap. He hesitated, started to speak again, and stopped. He shook his head slightly and finally said in an oddly stifled voice, “Miss Lovegood, I am confident… that Hagrid would, as you say, ‘love’ to hatch a basilisk. Whether I asked him ‘nicely’ or not. But that’s hardly the point in question—”

He broke off, his shoulders shaking helplessly. After a few coughs, there was red at his mouth.

Madam Pomfrey rushed in instantly. Her glare at Neville and Luna rivaled that of any King of Serpent’s. Having _some_ intelligence, however much Professor Snape might have disputed that fact, Neville didn’t wait for her to order them to leave.

*

 

Neville didn’t think about where he was going; Luna trailed him like mist.

They finally plumped down beside the lake. Eventually Luna said thoughtfully, “Not flattery, not thanks, or not too much. He obviously likes to brag, but reminding him of past triumphs reminds him also of failures, and of his weakness now. And he does seem really rather to mistrust bragging; maybe he thinks it’s a Gryffindor foible or something? A challenge might work better. Though the basilisk didn’t work quite as well as I’d hoped, did it? Still, he seemed a bit invigorated, there at the end.”

Neville blinked at her. “The basilisk didn’t work as well as what? “

“His current wand core is dragon heartstring, you know. I asked Mr. Ollivander.”

Neville sighed at the _non sequitur_ inevitable in any conversation with Luna and just asked, “The headmaster’s wand core is what? And why is it important?”

“Dragons guard their treasure. The headmaster needs something to protect. No, that’s not it exactly: he needs to feel that he _is_ protecting something. Only right now he’s imagining that he can’t.”

“Luna… what are we talking about? In fact, what are we doing?”

“Making sure that the headmaster survives, of course. He won’t if he doesn’t want to, not as injured as he is. So we have to make sure that he has reason to want to,” Luna replied matter-of-factly.

“Oh,” said Neville, picking up a pebble and throwing it in the water. Luna picked another up and skipped it.

Neville had never learned how to do that, skipping stones. He picked up another pebble thoughtfully and told it, “That’s all right then.”

He cast it over the silver water.

It sank. No competence had magically manifested itself: Neville still couldn’t skip a stone.

*

 

Neville braced himself to face Madam Pomfrey after leaving the headmaster coughing blood, but to his surprise her face was actually a little warmer than the day before. Luna, apparently, shared none of Neville’s doubts.

“Did he sleep well after we left?” Luna demanded.

Madam Pomfrey hesitated. She said finally, “It’s not good for him to cough like that; it can tear the healing tissue. If he does it again I want you to call me at once, do you understand? At once.”

“Of course, Madam Pomfrey,” Luna said demurely.

Neville gave Luna a sharp glance; she didn’t return it.

Luna persisted, “But did the headmaster sleep well?”

Madam Pomfrey hesitated again and said finally. “Not exactly. He seemed to have had something on his mind.”

Luna lifted her chin and met Madam Pomfrey’s eyes. “Excellent!” she proclaimed, and pushed open the door of the private room.

*

The professor was awake this time, but he was even whiter than before. He said apathetically, “Miss Lovegood. Mr. Longbottom.”

That useless wand on the night stand drew Neville’s eyes again.

Before he could think to shut up, Neville blurted out, “I used to think that _I_ was a Squib.”

He blushed hotly, wishing he’d cut out his tongue before saying something like that to a cripple.

The professor, however, only frowned slightly and remarked, “You melted a cauldron in your first class.”

Neville blushed more deeply. “I remember. Incompetent from the get-go. I added the porcupine quills too soon.”

The professor pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Your grasp of magical theory, Longbottom … never fails to, ah, astound me. “ Snape shifted and said, “Miss Lovegood, enlighten your fellow student…. Were a Muggle or Squib to take a nearly brewed Boil-healing draught … and add the porcupine quills while the cauldron was still on the flames … what would happen?”

Luna frowned for a moment, her eyes going misty. “It would boil over.”

“And if most first-years did it?”

She shrugged. “It would boil over. Like when Magda did it in my class. I always figured you assigned that potion first so we’d learn right off that following instructions precisely can be critical in your class.”

Snape waved his hand at Neville. “Longbottom, here, melted his cauldron … and gave himself a bad case of boils.”

Luna’s eyes widened. “Oh. That makes sense.”

Neville said impatiently, “What makes sense?”

Luna answered, “When someone brews, they infuse the potion with their own magic. So someone with above-average power would produce stronger than usual reactions, even, um, undesired ones.”

The professor took a rasping breath and added, “First-year classes … almost invariably have at least one person who makes that … particular mistake. Exactly four times … in my experience … has the result been a melted cauldron.”

Neville goggled at him.

The professor raised an eyebrow back. “One of those was my own.”

Luna had been gazing vacantly out the window, but now she looked back at the professor. “You weren’t splashed, were you, sir.” It didn’t sound at all like a question.

The professor looked a little smug. “Neither I nor my partner.”

Neville blinked. “ _You_ melted a cauldron in your first Potions class? Uh, sir.”

The professor said dismissively, “In _my_ case, it was an experiment…. In yours, I knew that I was dealing with a combination of Gryffindor … contempt for following exact instructions and … a fair degree of native, but apparently wholly uncontrolled, power.”

Professor Snape paused artistically. It was, of course, entirely beside the point that he’d managed to snatch another labored breath in the pause. “Frankly, it rather annoyed me… that you showed so little interest in cultivating your talents. I am sure that all of your teachers, this last year … have been pleased that you finally decided to start performing… up to your potential.”

As Neville stared, the memory of an acrid comment worked its way up to the surface of his boggled brain.

_“Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest spells.”_

That had been as much compliment as insult, and Neville had never even noticed. He gaped at the professor.

Professor Snape sank back a little on his pillow. After a moment he said, “Enlivening as this conversation must be considered to be, I am still an invalid…. I do believe I need more rest. Miss Lovegood, Mr. Longbottom?”

They excused themselves hastily.

*

Madam Pomfrey was lurking when they exited; Neville noticed her casting a quick Silencing charm on the door. She said nothing, but her face was anxious.

Luna answered as though Madam Pomfrey had asked a direct question. “He set Neville straight about something, and he took an interest in what we said. But he seems awfully tired still, and he asked to rest.”

Neville blurted, “Shouldn’t he be getting stronger by now? He seems so weak.”

Madam Pomfrey’s brisk façade dissolved a little. She stroked the quill on her desk and said reluctantly, “Usually when I heal someone I’m—mostly encouraging their own healing. Their own magic does much of the work, assisted by my potions and spells. Where there’s scarring or irreparable damage, unless the Darkest spells overwhelmed the victim, it’s often because the wizard feels there should be, given the gravity of the trauma—”

Luna interrupted, “Is that why he’s so weak then? Because he thinks that Squibs are weak?”

Madam Pomfrey looked up at Luna, arrested. She said finally, slowly, “I don’t see how it could be. There’s no mechanism, you see. He has no magic to effect that. Or to effect—anything at all.”

Madam Pomfrey turned her face away. “That’s why no one can question Severus’s loyalty now. He drained his last magic to give Potter those memories. Wandlessly, nonverbally, as injured as he was—it should have been impossible. It’s normally impossible to drain oneself completely, whatever the circumstances. One’s deepest instincts don’t let one do that. Even dying, one usually holds something in reserve, in hope….”

Neville wasn’t sure that she was still speaking to them, that she remembered that they were there. She said softly, roughly, “But Severus was always stubborn. Stubborn, stupid—”

Madam Pomfrey stopped. Then she exhaled and scrubbed her hand over her face. “Three times in the last five hundred years, and always in the direst circumstances. No, no one now can question his allegiance.”

She turned towards them suddenly, but Neville still wasn’t convinced that she was actually talking to them. She said urgently, “If he hadn’t done that, you know—if he hadn’t spent himself---he was stuffed to the gills with anti-venin, and he had Blood-Replenishing Potion in his pocket. The anti-venin had already done most of its work before he gave up his magic, that’s how he survived at all. If he hadn’t spent himself to force out those memories, he could have drunk the Blood-Replenisher and been—well, knowing Severus, he’d have been ambulatory within the hour, and insisting on joining the fight.” She snorted. “Though he shouldn’t have. But by now, he should be suffering nothing but scarring and a little weakness. Instead….”

She stopped, her throat working. Then she muttered, “Most of what I can do to help him isn’t working properly. Because he has no magic left for it to work with. All that I can do is to keep him mostly stable. But St. Mungo’s would be worse—they’d try, all over, what I already know doesn’t work. And they’re even more overworked than I, and I’m not sure they’d actually care, or would take the time to try with him….” Her face contracted, and she turned away from Neville and Luna.

In Neville’s mind, Snape’s nose jutted out against his wasted face and black lank hair, vivid against a decade-and-a-half backdrop of sterile white beds. Neville swallowed and straightened, saying, “Hermione’s parents—she explained to me one time that they were mouth and tooth healers, that Muggles had their own ways of doing things without magic. Hermione said they weren’t as fast as our healers, but—if our methods aren’t working right…?”

Madam Pomfrey snapped to attention. “Would the Grangers know—if they’re healers of any sort—anything about treating trauma? They already know about Hogwarts; it wouldn’t violate the Statute of Secrecy to bring them here to consult—”

Luna broke in, “Kathy. That little third year that we let into the D.A., Neville. Her mother is a Muggle healer, a dock-ter she called it; she mentioned it in the common room.”

“Kathy Morrison,” Madam Pomfrey declared. Her worn face was suddenly fierce.


	2. Chapter 2

Madam Pomfrey was at her desk dictating records to her quill when Neville and Luna crept up to her door. She nodded them in without even looking up.  
  
The professor had a somewhat frightening looking thin metal cylinder poked into the flesh of his arm, held in place by what looked a bit like Spellotape. It was connected to a translucent flexible tube, which in turn attached to a hovering bag half-filled with straw-colored fluid. Both bag and tube were made of some unfamiliar material.   
  
Neville longed to examine the weird material. Luna, less inhibited, fingered the bag. She grimaced, wiped her finger on her robes, and plumped herself down on the foot of the professor’s bed.  
  
The professor’s cheeks were noticeably less hollow, but he still looked exhausted and apathetic. His scowl at Luna was a mere tracery of what it should have been. It occurred to Neville finally that if the professor had been really himself, he could—and would—have kept them both out of his rooms all along.   
  
Neville scowled in turn at Snape. All right then, the professor did really need them, if only to annoy the man into remembering he was still alive.  
  
Snape stared pointedly at Luna, perched on the corner of his bed. “Miss Lovegood. This is unseemly. Provide yourself with a chair, if you wish to sit. Better yet, leave and let me rest.”  
  
“In peace? “ Luna said brightly. She leaned forward a little and patted the professor’s foot through the linens. “Neville doesn’t mind the unseemliness, and there’s plenty of room here. As long as you don’t kick.”  
  
Neville looked up involuntarily and met the professor’s eyes, which widened in sudden temptation. Neville grinned at him. “No, sir. Don’t do it. Luna, down!”   
  
She twisted a little to face Neville. “But I’m perfectly comfortable here. And it’s best not to sit on conjured furniture when Argelembies are about. They suck the magic out, you know, and then you’re left trying to sit on air. Which doesn’t work as well, really, as one might hope.”   
  
The headmaster’s mouth tightened. “Miss Lovegood, am I to be permitted any control at all over my environment? OUT!”  
  
Luna patted Snape’s foot again and hopped down. “Certainly, headmaster, if that’s what you wish. But have you decided yet about the basilisk? If you have, I could let Hagrid know….”  
  
Snape’s incensed growl sounded almost normal.  
  
*  
  
Luna skipped a stone.  
  
Neville folded his arms and watched her.   
  
She skipped another, then a third, and finally said, “He’s not biting on the basilisk. We need another project to engage him. Neville, you understand the professor better than anyone. Now that Harry doesn’t require his help any more, what is the headmaster most worried about protecting?”  
  
Wait. _Neville_ understood _Snape?_ In what universe?   
  
Well, Neville granted reluctantly, maybe in Luna’s. Who knew what went on in that flyaway head?  
  
But while Neville was wrestling with his astonishment, words skipped entirely past his befuddled brain to dance out of his mouth without warning or permission.   
  
“Draco Malfoy.”  
  
Luna frowned. “But didn’t Draco just get sent to Azkaban? What could he be protected from there?”  
  
This wasn’t HIS idea; Luna was the one who asked! Neville drew a breath to blast her, and then stooped to gather up a stone. A nice flat one. He tried to whisk it over the surface   
  
Plunk.   
  
Another. Plunk.  
  
Any stones Neville cast, sank.   
  
Neville had to think before he said anything important.  
.   
Luna wandered away from Neville along the shore, selecting pebbles. She held up her robe to carry them as unselfconsciously as any six-year-old. Eventually she returned to Neville’s side and started in on skipping her new collection. “Well?” she asked, her attention apparently all on the silver water and the gray stones.   
  
Luna’s stones, unlike Neville’s, danced and sank, danced and sank.  
  
“You know how this place gossips,” Neville muttered. “Probably it isn’t true.”  
  
Luna laughed. “Like how they gossip that I’m your girlfriend? Even I heard that one, but only because Anner asked me outright if it were true.”  
  
Neville went red. “Luna, it’s not that I don’t like you fine—”  
  
She laughed again, and handed him a stone. It was banded in two shades of gray, and it was smooth under his fingers. “Only we’re not like that, is all. But I like you fine, too. So what do they gossip about Professor Snape?”  
  
It was true: Luna was too disconnected to hear even the most common gossip. Neville wouldn’t tell her _that_ rumor, or that. Or the one that had made Harry hit Zacharias Smith with a Silencio, and then thrust his wand at Zach’s throat and hiss, “Never repeat that. Do you hear me? Never.”  
  
Harry hadn’t yet been to visit Professor Snape, and he didn’t seem to want to.  
  
Neville said reluctantly, “They say that the first time the professor woke, the first thing Madam Pomfrey told him was that Voldemort was gone but Harry had survived. And he—the professor—fainted. And the third time that he woke, he demanded the full list of casualties, and, well, they say he simply refused to lose consciousness until they’d read him the whole list. The /i>whole </i> list. Um, both sides. And he didn’t say a word. That’s what they say.”  
  
Luna’s eyes glowed at him. “So the second time?”  
  
Neville fingered his stone. “They say—that he woke asking about Malfoy. And saying—that Malfoy should be protected from the Ministry, that he’d turned against the Dark Lord.”  
  
Luna turned away, casting a stone out over the silver water.   
  
Neville tried to explain. “They also say—that Snape couldn’t help himself from saying that, because of that Vow. That it would make him lie, or confuse him. Only what I think instead is—I mean, Snape always favored Malfoy, right? And maybe part of that was, was keeping in good with the real Death Eaters, like Malfoy’s dad? But maybe part of that was real? Maybe he hoped, maybe he wanted to think… that Malfoy had been—like him, see, that he’d gone wrong at first but then changed his mind before the end. But Snape’s wanting that doesn’t make it true, necessarily.”  
  
Neville floundered to a halt in the face of Luna’s cool incomprehension, then reasserted, “But it’s Malfoy who he’s worried about most, now he knows that Harry’s fine without his help.”  
  
He threw a stone, recklessly. It didn’t dance, even once, on the pale surface. The stone vanished; the ripples died.   
  
*  
  
  
Neville looked down at the gaunt, wasted man.   
  
Neville’s own flesh was firm on his bones; his skin bore only a few superficial scars. His rude health and strength seemed somehow an affront to the older wizard.   
  
No, no longer a wizard; Snape had burned himself up, poured himself out, to give Harry the last knowledge that Harry needed to destroy Voldemort….   
  
Neville had lain awake night upon night as a kid, wondering whether he might really be a Squib. Whether Uncle Algie’s next attempt to scare some magic from Neville would finally kill him.   
  
And this man had done that to himself. He had poured out his last magic.  
  
If the headmaster wanted something now, even if it was help getting Draco sodding Malfoy cleared, then Neville would try.   
  
Only… Neville understood, better than most, better surely than Luna, that trying to prove a falsehood and failing would hurt much worse.  
  
Neville couldn’t be a party to letting Snape do that.  
  
So Neville took a hard breath and stammered, “Sir. Do you—I’m sorry; there’s no way to say this right. Do you really think that Malfoy had changed sides and tried to help us, sir, or do you just think that because you’d like to—like to think, to believe, that he’s like you? That he had made a mistake but ended on the right side before the end?”  
  
Snape’s brows snapped down, and he frowned at Neville. After a moment, he rasped, “I fail to understand the question, Longbottom.”  
  
Neville took a breath, another. He traced an arc on the bedside table with his finger. “If—if he really did. There should be proof. Something we could find. If we looked hard enough. We could help you look.”  
  
Snape sneered, “But there’s no proof to be found, Longbottom. Everyone knows that my Unbreakable Vow is acting upon me, now I’m a Squib, rather in the manner of a Confundus. My opinion is valueless.”  
  
The professor managed to spit that out in one uninterrupted, bitter, spew.  
  
Luna regarded him critically. “No, definitely not like a Confundus; you’re much too capable of bitterness on the subject.” She shrugged and continued, “But, you know, I never really thought that much about Draco, except to feel sorry for him while I was his prisoner.”  
  
Neville and Snape looked at her, then at each other. It had become almost routine for the two men to exchange a glance of horrified incomprehension at one of Luna’s statements. Her gooseberry gaze traveled between them, and she blinked. “Well, I felt sorry for Ollivander too, of course. And myself. For all of us prisoners. But it’s not like I could have helped the Death Eaters much; they’d have had to save themselves, and it didn’t seem that they mostly could. Their trap was dug too deeply for escape, or so they seemed to think.”  
  
Snape looked suddenly more ancient than twinkling Dumbledore ever had.  
  
Luna continued, “But about Draco, sir; you know that I did watch YOU a lot this last year. And it’s made me understand Slytherins a little better.”  
  
The professor’s face stiffened into a mask. Luna regarded him serenely. “One of the things I came to understand is that, when dealing with the smarter Slytherins, one should always at least consider the possibility that what DOES happen is what they WANTED to make happen. And Draco might have been naïve at first, but he was smart.”  
  
A set of lines bracketing the professor’s mouth deepened. “In less metaphorical language, O Ravenclaw?”  
  
Luna’ face opened suddenly in a smile. “Draco’s effect this last year upon the other children of Death Eaters was, shall we say, markedly counterproductive for recruitment to your supposed mutual cause. And you’re sure that he meant it to be. That’s partly what you saw.”  
  
She regarded Snape with all the triumph of a Ravenclaw mastering a riddle. Snape awarded her the barest inclination of his head.  
  
Neville looked at them both in confusion. “Counterproductive? But he—Malfoy—was all the time going on about what an honour it was to serve the Dark Lord….” Neville had testified in court about that!  
  
Two heads turned in unison. Pale eyes and black ones locked on him. Neville flushed under their joint stare and protested, “Well, he was!”  
  
The professor said austerely, “And was the effect … of Draco’s perorations … to make you aspire to that honour?”  
  
Neville blinked.   
  
Luna explained, “Did Draco ever make you FEEL that you’d be lucky to join the Death Eaters? Or that Draco himself had been lucky, really, to have joined? Whatever he said about it, did he look lucky to you?”  
  
Neville blinked again. Malfoy had looked like shite, frankly, all this last year. No, from sometime in sixth year; Neville had just disliked him too much to take notice. Hollow-eyed, thin, haunted…. Neville’s eyes narrowed as he visualized proud Malfoy scuttling down the corridors, eyes lowered; sitting in the Great Hall hunched over a plate nearly empty of food; boasting of how _his_ family got to host the Dark Lord. How Malfoy’s voice had been, always, just a little too high and too fast.   
  
And Neville remembered Malfoy, cringing, whinging to Amycus Carrow, “You’ll give _him_ a good report of me, sir, won’t you?”   
  
Carrow had laughed in reply. “Not if you don’t start doing better at your curses, _Mister_ Malfoy. Anyone would think you don’t like the Cruciatus so much. I _know_ you can do better.”  
  
Neville had marched past them, proud of the “bad report” _he_ had earned , fair and square, in class that day.  
  
Malfoy had looked sick and shaken at Carrow’s answer. But had he ever done “better”? It was Crabbe, and sometimes Goyle, whom Carrow had always singled out for praise. Which was bizarre, now that Neville finally thought to question it. Malfoy, with his brains and power, coming in behind Crabbe and Goyle?   
  
Unless… he had wanted to.   
  
Only that made no sense. Neville burst out, “But Malfoy was always a bully; he LIKED hurting others! And he always was ambitious to join the Death Eaters, to be just like dear old dad—why should that have changed? He should have been in his glory, this last year---only …”   
  
_Only he wasn’t._ That much was irrefutable.  
  
“Malfoy was never exactly a bully,” Luna said reflectively. “I mean, a bully attacks people because he thinks it’s fun, either because he simply enjoys hurting people or because he likes to show off his power and doesn’t care that he’s hurting others. Like the Weasley twins. And bullies mostly pick on people who are weak or without allies. Like I was, until this last year, so I saw quite a lot of it. I never saw Malfoy attack anyone but his enemies. You know, Harry and Harry’s friends, or Quidditch rivals. And Harry attacked him too, of course. And even then, Malfoy usually started with needling people, taunting them, not with hexing. It was usually the Gryffindors who drew wands first. I don’t think Draco ever especially liked causing pain, even to people he very much disliked.”  
  
Neville liked Luna, but he wasn’t going to let her get away with this. There was out of it, and then there was just flat wrong. He faced her. “But that’s just not true, Luna. I mean, that Malfoy just attacked Harry and his friends. He was always a total shite to me, even before I was taken up at all by Harry or the D.A.” He glanced quickly at the professor, who didn’t seem minded to reprove his language. The man was frowning at Luna.  
  
“Well, but your parents were both Aurors,” Luna said equably.  
  
Neville stared at her. Yet another _non sequitur_ ; he should be inured to them with her. Yes, his parents were both Aurors, heroes destroyed in the fight against You-Know-Who. He’d known that as long he’d known anything. And his family had made clear, always, just how inadequate a replacement he was for Frank, who had, when only five, broken an entire set of dishes when he’d been denied pudding.   
  
(“ _Melted a cauldron in his first class,”_ Neville’s mind whispered suddenly without permission.)   
  
What did Neville’s parents have to do with Malfoy?  
  
Luna, however, seemed confused in turn at Neville’s obtuseness. She repeated, “Your parents were _Aurors_ , Neville. Of course Draco would have held that against you. I mean, if the Lestranges had had children who’d come to Hogwarts, wouldn’t you have considered them automatic enemies?”  
  
Behind her Snape shifted suddenly. He rasped, “You’ve been reading the back issues of your father’s journal, Miss Lovegood.”  
  
She looked briefly surprised. “Naturally, Professor. And some of the Prophets from then, too, though of course one can’t rely on them for accuracy.”  
  
Snape snorted derisively, but declined to make any comments about the relative accuracy of various publications.  
  
Neville stared from one to the other. “What are you talking about?”  
  
Luna answered, “Well, The Prophet approved of the measures, of course, and downplayed them. Made them more palatable, you know, for public consumption. Most people haven’t felt or seen the Cruciatus Curse, so it’s relatively easy to downplay to the ignorant. No permanent physical damage, after all. Most of the time.”  
  
“What measures?” Neville said carefully. “Downplayed what? The CRUCIATUS?”   
  
He really hadn’t meant to yell.  
  
“That the Aurors were using all three Unforgiveable Curses against anyone they accused of being Death Eaters. Or of being criminals, actually; they sort of confused the two,” Luna explained.  
  
Neville whispered, “My parents were Aurors.”  
  
Luna answered reasonably, “That’s what I said.”  
  
The Knut dropped, and Neville advanced on Luna, shouting, “My parents were heroes! They didn’t use the Unforgiveables! They weren’t, weren’t killers or, or torturers!”  
  
“Well, possibly not, of course,” Luna agreed. “The Quibbler did have interviews with two Aurors who’d resigned on principle rather than use them. Only your parents didn’t—resign, I mean. So even if they themselves didn’t use them, they at least approved of their being used.”  
  
Neville rasped, “My parents wouldn’t have done something like that.” He whirled to stare at the professor, who gazed back expressionlessly, refusing to give Neville any reaction to Luna’s insane charges.  
  
Luna broke their staring match by saying softly, “You might as well tell the truth for once, professor. I can verify it eventually, you know, and I’ll tell him if you won’t. So you can’t protect him from the knowledge.”  
  
Both of them stared at her instead. Neville had never before appreciated quite how unsettling Luna’s implacable gooseberry eyes really were. Her face was unconcerned, placid, as she looked between the two of them.  
  
Professor Snape shifted slightly on his pillow.   
  
Luna’s lips curved faintly. “Me or you, Professor Snape. Who has to tell him?”  
  
The professor swallowed and said, “Alice Longbottom went on maternity leave at about the time that the … the change in policy was announced…. When she returned, she was still a nursing mother, and she was assigned to desk work…. Records-keeping and so forth. One of the things that made her a target, when a few of the Death Eaters decided … that they’d like to resurrect their late master and hoped the Auror Department might have acquired knowledge of his location.   
  
“Frank Longbottom, however, … continued working in the field. Had he refused to use lethal force against suspects or to participate in his fair share of interrogations … he’d have been suspended or sacked. The standard protocol for interrogations of suspected Death Eaters at that time was to use a combination of sleep deprivation, Veritaserum, the Imperius Curse—the Truth-Telling variant, which ironically had been developed originally by Riddle—and the Cruciatus. It was held that that combination would … minimize resistance and obtain the most accurate results.”  
  
Luna prompted softly, “And Draco’s father…?”  
  
“Was interrogated under those protocols, and cleared himself. I don’t know which Aurors were directly involved. I should doubt that Lucius himself knew for sure; one’s memory would not be … fully reliable, in the circumstances.”  
  
Neville bestirred himself to argue, “But Lucius Malfoy WAS a Death Eater! We all know that now! So if he was interrogated, he managed to lie! So those, those ‘protocols’, they couldn’t have used them on him after all, or they would’ve worked. You’re wrong! The Aurors probably didn’t use them at all; on anyone. _They didn’t really use them! You can’t know that they did! You’re wrong! My parents wouldn’t have—they didn’t---THEY WEREN’T TORTURERS LIKE—_ ”  
  
Luna touched his arm, and Neville’s mouth snapped shut  
  
There was a silence.  
  
After a while Professor Snape said, his voice flat, “They used those protocols, boy. I should imagine that Lucius Malfoy testified that he felt no loyalty to the Dark Lord and that he’d executed the Dark Lord’s orders only under, ah, … compulsion…. He could almost certainly have said that much by then with absolute truth.”  
  
There was another silence.   
  
The professor added, “Malfoy’s defense had been that he’d been under the Imperius…. There is no way, you see, for a true victim of the Imperius Curse … to prove afterward that he or she … had been magically compelled. Or even to know, oneself…. Not if one had been ordered to forget the actual casting, which is the normal procedure. Victims … have committed suicide, not knowing….   
  
“I understand that Crouch and Carrow cast it on some of you students in lessons…. If you experienced it, you will remember that one does not experience the curse directly except as a feeling of being… adrift, usually pleasantly. The victim, after, can remember with certainty only … behaving in an unusual or abhorrent manner. So someone might testify later with complete sincerity …that he MUST have been under the Imperius, to have done such things.  
  
“I apologize that I failed to make that point clear enough when I was your instructor. That’s why it was so difficult … to separate victims of the Imperius from recipients of—of other forms of compulsion. And you must understand that those who … originally joined Riddle in all sincerity were afterwards kept by him, always, under—heavy pressure to obey.”  
  
Luna looked up at that; her eyes shone suddenly with tears. “I think my father would rather have been put under the Imperius, than to have betrayed Harry on his own.”  
  
Neville turned his back on the two of them and walked away. He pressed his forehead against the wall, which didn’t help. Then Neville punched the wall with all his force; the pain at least distracted him.  
  
Neville had wondered, a little, why Luna hadn’t been with those who’d fled back instantly back to their families for comfort. Only Luna and her father were so incalculable that Neville hadn’t wondered much.   
  
Now Neville wondered a little more about Mr. Lovegood, with his printing press, his magazines, his weird beliefs shared by his readers and his daughter.   
  
His knowledge of having tried to trade Harry, Hermione, Ron, and perhaps the fate of the Wizarding World, for that daughter.  
  
A daughter who, it seemed, didn’t want to see him now. However weird her other beliefs remained.  
  
Neville didn’t want to think about all this; he turned back to the others. His face felt stiff. He asked, “Were you ever … interrogated, sir?”  
  
Professor Snape curled his lip. “By which side?”  
  
Neville was silent, digesting that. Luna lifted her brows. “That doesn’t answer the question, sir. Of course, I could probably look it up.”  
  
Snape frowned at her. She looked back placidly, implacably, until Snape said, “Only briefly. To authenticate the headmaster’s claims about me, afterwards. Dumbledore sat in, to control the, the—line of questioning. To ensure that none of the Order’s secrets were inadvertently revealed.”  
  
Neville stuttered, “Did he, did my, my father assist at your interrogation? Did he cast the, the spells?”  
  
Professor Snape regarded him impassively. “I believe not, Mr. Longbottom. But I told you that one’s memory is not reliable. You could ask the headmaster’s portrait, if your need to know is so compelling. But not all knowledge is useful. I never thought it productive to try to ascertain who was involved.”  
  
“But you thought it was Crouch himself and Moody,” Luna put in. “It should have been quite senior people, shouldn’t it? Given the sensitivity of what you might have said, even with Dumbledore there to stop you.”  
  
The headmaster closed his eyes for an instant; then he favored Luna with his best black-ice stare. “It passes my comprehension, Miss Lovegood, why you’ve never troubled to learn properly to focus that mind of yours.”  
  
She smiled suddenly. “Because so often one sees more with peripheral vision, sir.”  
  
The professor snorted, folded his arms, and looked insufferably disdainful. But Neville noted that he didn’t actually say anything in rebuttal.   
  
Then the professor looked back at Neville. His arms unfolded and landed hard and flat along the bed. His mouth thinned to a grim line. But his voice, when he spoke, was soft, almost uninflected. “Do bear in mind, Mr. Longbottom, that both Lucius Malfoy and I were, in fact, criminals.”  
  
The professor waited a moment and continued, “You should have Madam Pomfrey see to that hand; I think it’s broken.”  
  
Neville stared at his throbbing hand, which he had been cradling absently. After a while Neville remembered the conversation they had started to have, before. He said hoarsely, “So that’s what you really think of Malfoy? That he wanted to resist doing Voldemort’s will, but he just wasn’t strong enough, and you want us to prove it? That he was—was like Luna’s father, not wanting to obey, but facing pressure he couldn’t resist?”  
  
The professor swallowed, looking suddenly exhausted. Luna chirped, “Not at all, Neville. The professor thinks that Draco went past ‘wanting to resist’ being Mr. Riddle’s tool to actively working against him. Only the professor isn’t willing to tell anyone why he really thinks that, and he thinks that if Draco hid the evidence well enough to fool Mr. Riddle, no one else can uncover it. And Snape isn’t Dumbledore, to make everyone accept it on his say-so. Well, on his say-so and the Aurors’ version of a token interrogation assisted by the Cruciatus Curse.”  
  
She smiled at the professor, who’d tensed again. She said, “I expect if you’re not willing to tell anyone why you think Draco would have turned wholeheartedly against Mr. Riddle, headmaster, it must be something like your reason for having done so—something intensely private, right, that it would be a betrayal to talk about in public? And we’re not in Draco’s confidence—nor in yours, come to that. So we won’t ask.” Luna patted Snape’s hand reassuringly; the professor stared at her hand as though it were a Gorgon’s paw.   
  
Luna said, “You really do think that Draco hated the Dark Lord enough to have worked actively against him, don’t you? But you don’t know how to find proof, and you have to have proof to save him from Azkaban. Isn’t that the situation?”  
  
Unnerving silver eyes locked on unsettling black ones. Finally, reluctantly, the professor tilted his head slightly. Luna smiled, radiant as the moon. “If Draco did anything, anything at all, there’ll be some trace, somewhere. The Dark Lord never suspected him, so he never knew to look. That was your own biggest protection, this last year, after all. I saw through you—”  
  
Neville watched Professor Snape flinch on his bed.  
  
“—so I can find the evidence for Draco. Well, with Neville’s help, of course.” She turned her smile from Snape to Neville. “You’ll help me, Neville, won’t you? We’ll find the evidence.”  
  
“Yes,” Neville heard himself responding firmly. “We will.”  
  
To his dismay, he meant it.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

Truth is slippery. Mutable. You have to hold tightly to what is real while everything around it shifts shape ….  
*

 

Luna skipped in, levitating the school’s Pensieve before her. It bounced in time to her skips; the former headmaster’s lips tightened in reproof. Neville followed only slightly more sedately. He beamed at Professor Snape, who recoiled slightly in response. Luna glanced at Snape’s bedside table and said, “Neville, could you clear that, please? And, maybe, charm it stronger? This thing is heavy.”

Neville fumbled for his wand. With a pass and a mumble, the legs on Snape’s bedside table thickened and the top cleared. Neville looked a little helplessly at the carafe, glass, and potions phials he was holding in mid-air. Luna set down the Pensieve, laughed at Neville’s expression, and took the jumble from him with a wave of her own wand. She tucked the items firmly under the table and turned her smile on Snape. “We have something for you, sir. A start at least. Neville, you tell him, it was your idea!”

“It was not!” Neville protested. “It was Nelson’s!”

“Well, it was your idea to ask them,” Luna explained. She turned to Snape and continued, “See, what Neville said was, if Malfoy was opposing Voldemort in some sneaky, underhanded Slytherin way, it would probably take other Slytherins to figure out what he was doing and where he might have left evidence, no matter how careful he was being. Only you’re too ill right now to give as much thought to the matter as you’d like, sir. So that was Neville’s inspiration. see, to ask the other Slytherin students where to look.

“So we started talking to some of the Slytherin upper years, when we could get them to talk to us. And do you know, none of the brighter ones seemed at all shocked by the suggestion. In fact, about a third of them nodded knowingly. And Nelson said right off, ‘Potter testified in Malfoy’s defense, but I heard it was pretty feeble. But if he testified at all, he saw something that convinced him of something to Malfoy’s credit. Maybe it would be useful to check Potter’s actual memories. Isn’t there a way to do that?’ So Neville and I harassed Harry until, well, here. But it was Neville’s idea to start with, to ask the other Slytherins for suggestions!”

Neville blushed a little. Luna produced a phial filled with a coiling, silvery not-fluid that was almost the color of her eyes. “This first one is Harry’s testimony before the Wizengamot.”

She dropped it into the Pensieve and prodded it, incanting. A silvery figure appeared: Harry, looking determined, earnest, and completely out of his depth, said, “Well, fair is fair. His mother did save my life, even if it was from selfish motives, and Malfoy couldn’t bring himself to kill the headmaster when it came to it. I mean, yes, Malfoy accepted Voldemort’s assignment to kill Headmaster Dumbledore, and he tried to carry it out, but when he had the headmaster disarmed he couldn’t make himself actually do it. And then when the Snatchers took us to Malfoy Manor he was reluctant to identify us at first. He crumbled pretty quickly, but at first he did try to shelter us by saying he wasn’t sure it was us.”

Luna sucked the memory back into her wand and replaced it in the phial, then pulled out a second one. She looked earnestly at the professor. “It’s better if one can see the whole scene, but of course you can’t enter a Pensieve just now, and Professor Flitwick tells me one can only pull out one figure at a time. This is from Harry’s memory of when they were caught and taken to Malfoy Manor for Draco to identify them.” She poked the Pensieve again, muttering, and a totally different Harry emerged, dirty and ragged, with his face almost unrecognizably swollen and inflamed.

“Whoops,” Luna said. “Wrong figure. Let me try again.” She fished in the Pensieve and murmured, and a silver Draco Malfoy emerged instead, elegantly dressed but tense and far too thin. He stood a little hunched, hesitating, half turned away from the viewers.

Luna said, _sotto voce_ , “Mrs. Malfoy has just told him that the Snatchers think that one of the people they’ve just caught is Harry Potter, and has asked Draco to identify him. This is his response.”

Neville had already seen the memory-figure from all angles; he and Luna had watched this several times. At first he watched the professor, who had sat up slightly to concentrate on Malfoy’s image. But after a bit Neville too was sucked into the almost-silent drama.

The figure was still and stiff, its head still averted. Finally it stammered, “I can’t—I can’t be sure.”

A muscle in Malfoy’s face twitched, and he jerked back a little. Luna murmured, “Mr. Malfoy has just told Draco that if they’re the ones who hand Potter over, everything will be forgiven….”

The silver figure sidled further backwards as though in response to Luna’s words, looking down.

“Now Mr. Malfoy and the werewolf are arguing over who should get the credit for the capture, if it is Harry….”

Malfoy’s figure finally stepped forward a little, reluctance and fear written all over his face.

“Draco’s father has just ordered him to take a proper look.”

The silver figure insisted, “I don’t know!” It whirled and stalked away a few steps, averting its face.

“Mrs. Malfoy warns that they’d better not make a false report, and they all argue about that for a while, about the, um, risk, of misidentifying them. No one is paying any attention to Draco during that. Then one of the Snatchers finally says that Hermione matches her picture from the Prophet….”

Silver-Malfoy’s back was to the viewers. His shoulders were hunched, and he was hugging himself as though he were cold. Suddenly he stiffened and stammered, “I… maybe… yeah.”

“His mother has just agreed with Hermione’s identification, and asked Draco for corroboration. Next his father recognizes Ron, and orders Draco to confirm that—”

Draco said tonelessly, unmoving, still staring away from the viewers, “Yeah. It could be.”

“Then Bellatrix Lestrange comes in, and of course she knows Hermione as soon as she sees her.”

Draco’s posture changed suddenly; he looked as though he had slumped against a wall and pressed his face against it. After a moment he began to shake, and his fists clenched. Then he straightened, stood quite still for a moment, and turned. His face was absolutely empty of expression.

The memory-figure dissolved, and Luna and Neville looked triumphantly at Professor Snape.

After a moment the man said, “And Potter testified that Draco was ‘reluctant’ to identify them? It’s rare for a Gryffindor to attain such mastery of the art of understatement.”

The professor’s voice was almost disinterested, with only a little of its former cutting edge. But his face was fierce, and he’d straightened on his bed.

Neville glanced at Luna exultantly and said, “Well, be reasonable, Professor. Malfoy didn’t go so far as to draw his wand and Obliviate himself rather than identify them. And he didn’t actually burst into tears when he saw it was all up, though it looks like he came damned close. It’s even clearer when you can enter the memory; you can circle around to see his face. Malfoy looked like his best friend had died or something. Flat despair.”

Luna mused, “It’s obvious he had no idea what he’d reveal if anyone there had looked at their memories in a Pensieve.”

The professor’s jaw tightened. “Obviously I was remiss in not alerting my students to such a danger. Fortunately, the Dark Lord was quite uninterested in Pensieves, and I should doubt had ever used one. He preferred to rely on his Legilimency. He liked to, ah, probe personally for hidden information; he assumed that he could always get more that way. Not to mention the fact that the intrusion can be quite painful, and is, almost always, humiliating and frightening. We all, in fact, should bless our good fortune that the Dark Lord so frequently put pain ahead of efficacy.”

He frowned, seeming to deflate a little. “But I don’t see that this memory truly forwards us. We need proof, not that Draco felt disloyal to the Dark Lord, but that he acted against him. This shows that Draco wanted to put Potter’s interests ahead of the Dark Lord’s, but in fact he wasn’t successful here in doing so. So it tells us no more than what we already knew.”

Neville leaned forward. “With respect, sir, it tells us no more than what _you_ already knew. But no one believed you when you tried to tell us. I mean, I didn’t really believe you myself, before; I was just willing to take you seriously enough to look for evidence. And to be fair to Harry, living through it, or the first time you watch the memory, you would probably miss it. Well, _you_ wouldn’t, probably, sir, but I did. And most people would My attention was on my friends, and on Greyback and Mr. Malfoy. No one was really watching Malfoy while it was happening. Only as soon as you really focus on him—well, it becomes obvious that you were right all along about where his loyalties lay by then. Which, you know, was the first point we needed to establish.”

Luna added, “Moreover, sir, most people don’t take it for granted, as you do, what a risk it was to defy Mr. Riddle in the slightest. Draco might not have succeeded in keeping the others from eventually identifying the Trio, but he flat-out lied to try. He didn’t risk the lie that could have been proved, that it wasn’t them, but it’s obvious he was lying when he said he wasn’t sure. It’s even more obvious inside the memory, when you can actually see Ron and Hermione; no one who knew them could have failed to recognize them. If Mr. Riddle had caught him in the lie, Draco would have been tortured to death for disloyalty, and he lied knowing that. So this memory does prove that Draco knowingly risked torture, maybe even death, to give Harry just that little bit more time and a tiny chance to escape unrecognized. And in fact, sir, you remember that that little delay made all the difference: if Draco had identified Harry at once, his father would have called Mr. Riddle instantly, before Mrs. Lestrange came in and caused the delay about the sword, and it would all have been over.”

Snape’s eyes narrowed as he considered that. Finally he pronounced, “Insufficient.”

Luna beamed at him. “Well, yes, sir, of course. But this is just the first thing we’ve found, and it’s the first place we even looked! For a start it’s not so bad. But that’s the other thing, actually. It would be nice if we could show the whole Wizengamot this memory, if we have to. But only two or three at a time can enter a Pensieve. So it would be good if we could display the whole memory, like I pulled out Draco’s figure to display today. And it would be nice if we could amplify both the image and the sound, so we could do it in the court chamber if we had to.”

“Pensieves, Miss Lovegood, do not work that way.” The professor frowned heavily at the girl.

“Well, no, they don’t. Not yet. But I thought you could think about it—you’ve used Pensieves a lot, probably more than anyone else alive, what with all that lying to Mr. Riddle and spying for Professor Dumbledore. Maybe there’s a way to modify that spell that displays a single figure to display a whole scene?”

The professor frowned again, but this time in abstraction. One long finger tapped absently on his blanket.

After a moment Luna nudged Neville, and they slipped silently out the door. The professor didn’t bid them good-day when they left. Neville was heartened by this discourtesy.

*

Neville received a note that night from Madam Pomfrey. The message read, “Whatever you two did today, good job. Professor Snape demanded books after you left—the first time since he woke. But what in Nimue’s name is a Veesiar? Is it one of your plants, Longbottom, or one of the Lovegoods’ fabulous creatures? He’s been muttering about them incessantly since you two left.”

Luna didn’t know any more than Neville did; she said she thought the word sounded Arabic, or maybe Aramaic. But Hermione, when they finally asked her, laughed so hard that Neville grew alarmed. Then she promised to invite them both to a movie-watching party, after she’d fetched her parents home and had access to their telly. Luna and Neville had both nodded blankly at the promised treat.

*

Luna and Neville hesitated a little in entering the headmaster’s room. Snape raised his head and both his eyebrows at them. The action didn’t seem to exhaust him as much as it would have several days earlier.

“Miss Lovegood. Mr. Longbottom. Why this unseemly haste?”

Neville swallowed. “We—we thought it might be good to look at another memory of Harry’s.” It was Nelson’s suggestion, really. And not even Luna had actually dared to look at it. Yet.

The left eyebrow arched solo this time. “Yes?”

“We haven’t looked at it yet ourselves,” Neville admitted. “Um, there are only two people talking in it, Harry says, so we thought it would be good to try your spell to let you hear what the displayed person hears as well as what they say. And so we thought, we should, we should, um, maybe let you listen in on it first. Sir. If you want to. We don’t know, actually, if there will be anything useful in it. But Nelson thinks, we all think, that there’s a good chance that there might be.”

Luna put in, “Harry’s a dear boy, but he does rather tend to leave out the important bits when he tells things. It seems that Draco had a private conversation with Professor Dumbledore, which Harry happened to overhear. This memory is what he heard, which he’s never told in full.”

Professor Snape snorted twice during Luna’s comments. Then the man took another look at their faces and stiffened. Snape asked, very softly, “A … private… conversation? When?”

The last word dropped into the room’s silence like one of Neville’s stones.

Neville gulped and answered. “The… the night Professor Dumbledore… was ki—died. On the Astronomy Tower. Harry was there the whole time before it happened. This is… this memory is of the part between when Malfoy showed up and talked to Dumbledore and when the, when the Death Eaters did. Malfoy didn’t know that Harry was there to witness it. We uh, we had Harry stop the memory at that point. When they, when the others showed up. If we need to see anything that happened after that, we can always go back to Harry and ask for more….” Neville held up the phial in demonstration; his hand shook a little.

Professor Snape had turned to stone in his bed. His face was a white mask, but his eyes burned against his pallor. After a time he tilted his head the merest fraction towards the Pensieve.

Neville scuttled forward and tipped the contents of the phial into the basin. Not looking at the professor, he muttered, “Luna can operate the Pensieve by herself, if you’d rather—if you want me to leave.”

The professor said hoarsely, “Not necessary.” He’d turned his head away, so Neville wasn’t unduly flattered.

Luna tapped her wand on the Pensieve, and the memory bloomed forth.

Silver-Malfoy, panting and disheveled, shouted, _“Expelliarmus!”_

Another voice said calmly, “Good evening, Draco.”

Neville stepped backwards, again and again, until he found he’d ended up against the wall. He tried not to look at the professor; he really tried not to. Neville knew that he shouldn’t watch him. But he couldn’t stop except by closing his eyes, and closing his eyes made the voices echo much too clearly.

After a while, though, it didn’t matter so much, because Neville’s eyes were too full of tears to really see anything.

The second voice said approvingly, “Very good indeed. You found a way to let them in, did you?”

Neville was panting nearly as much as memory-Malfoy. He concentrated on trying to make his breathing silent.

Through the blur in his eyes, Neville saw Professor Snape nod once, sharply, when Malfoy explained about the Vanishing Cabinets.

The tranquil voice asserted, “It so happens that I trust Professor Snape—“

At that, Neville leaned against the wall, shut his eyes entirely, and tried desperately to remember how to breathe at all.

But when he heard a sudden rustling from the bed, Neville looked over automatically. Malfoy was going on about how he’d taken advantage of poor Rosmerta, and Professor Snape had _sat up in bed._ Luna turned her head sharply towards the professor. Her wand hovered over the Pensieve; the professor shook his head, and she let the rest of the memory play.

Dumbledore’s voice said finally, with deep certainty, “No, Draco. It is my mercy, and not yours, that matters now.”

Malfoy’s silver figure trembled. Its mouth opened as though to speak, and the shaking wand dipped slightly.

Sudden footsteps thundered behind the slight silver figure; memory-Malfoy staggered as though someone had shoved him aside in passing.

And all chance for mercy was lost.

*

Neville scrubbed his hand over his eyes and said roughly, “What? We already knew that he’d cast the Imperius on Rosmerta; that’s hardly evidence in his favor!”

Malfoy had been taunting Dumbledore, bragging about getting Death Eaters into Hogwarts, wanting to kill the headmaster… he was a damned Death Eater, and Neville was trying to CLEAR him? He’d have done it at the end, obviously; he’d bragged, “I’m the one with the wand… You’re at my mercy!”

This was all HER lunatic idea. Neville straightened to glare at Luna, but he found his gaze caught instead by the eyes of Dumbledore’s murderer.

An Avada Kedavra to the heart, those night-dark eyes.

Neville’s breath stopped. Then another pair of eyes swam suddenly into Neville’s mind: the exact shape and color of his own eyes in the mirror, but vacant. Vacant for as long as Neville could remember.

Neville whispered to the murderer, “Bellatrix Lestrange was never sorry for using the Cruciatus. D’you think my father ever was?”

Professor Snape’s eyes snapped shut. Finally they opened again. The rasping voice was almost gentle. “I have no information on that point, Mr. Longbottom. He was an Auror, but he was also a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and Dumbledore disapproved in principle. So it’s quite likely that your father didn’t actually _want_ to use the Unforgiveables, but that he agreed with the Ministry that their use was necessary in certain cases.”

Neville met the headmaster’s eyes. “Like yours was.”

Black eyes glittered inhumanly in the white face. “Perhaps so.”

Neville closed his eyes again and muttered, “All right, then, I’m just a stupid Gryffindor. Another stupid Gryffindor like Harry. What did I miss this time?”

Luna said, “All this last year at school, Draco was risking torture or worse to protect the D.A. And we can prove it.”

Neville’s eyes and mouth fell open. “WHAT? Protecting US?”

Luna smiled. “The Protean Charm.”

There was a short silence. Then the headmaster took pity on Neville’s evident bewilderment. “If you cast your mind back so far as a few weeks ago, Mr. Longbottom, you may possibly recall myself and the Carrows vehemently—and in my case, eloquently— expressing frustration at being unable to figure out how your little group was communicating. You used several methods, primarily the portraits, but the core members, the original group, used—“

“Charmed Galleons,” Neville gasped. “Malfoy _knew_ we were using charmed Galleons, and he never told!”

Neville’s eyes widened as he realized something more. “And he knew how to manipulate the Room of Requirement—he could hold it shut against Harry, remember, and he could get into it when Harry was in there. He could’ve let in the Carrows, at least at first, before we got so good at operating it.”

He blinked and tried to think it through. “But—is that really so much? I mean, it’s not like you did, sir, risking your life to DO something—“

“Neville!” Luna interjected. “You’re not thinking. This goes way past Draco playing dumb in class, or saying he wasn’t quite sure about something. How could anyone disprove that? _‘No, I’m sure you were really sure?’_ But what Draco did here went a lot further—if he were caught, if it came out that he’d known we’d used the Protean Charm before to communicate, how could he have excused not telling the Death Eaters? The only possible story would have been that he’d been too distracted to think much about it or just assumed we must have changed our method. As we would have, of course, had Harry ever told us Draco knew. A mistake, not deliberate disloyalty. But it’s awfully thin. Draco’s obviously a good Occlumens, better than he is an actor, to hope to pull that off at all.”

Snape grunted, “He is. And he’s really a better actor than that first memory showed; remember that Draco assumed for most of it that he was unobserved. Those moments when he knew he was on display, his face was mostly impassive and his body language relatively well managed. Even the reluctance that Potter picked up on—only Potter saw his features then, and Potter had seemed effectively to have been blinded by the hex. Worst managed was the voice—but he could have claimed to be stuttering in fear at the consequences of a misidentification. Which was, almost certainly, the literal truth.”

The professor paused, his eyes distant, and finally pronounced, “One should always use the truth when one chooses to lie to the Dark Lord.”

Snape favored the room with an absent, chilling smile.

After a moment the headmaster returned from his icy depths and focused on Luna. She scrabbled in turn to explain to Neville, “But, see, this was a whole YEAR that Draco had known and never told how we communicated. And Riddle punished even the most innocent mistakes with the Cruciatus. Draco courted that with his apparent incompetence, same as us but more so. But if Riddle had ever looked into his mind and seen that the mistakes and incompetence were deliberate, he’d have killed Draco horribly as a traitor.”

“All right then,” Neville said. “But—it’s not enough. The fact that he wouldn’t do ANYTHING openly—it just doesn’t look good. And this is partly about how things look.”

Luna’s face went slack. “But he was clearly risking himself. I think, by then, it was others he was trying not to risk. After all, why did my dad betray Harry?”

Neville went still. What would he have done, after all, if the Death Eaters had succeeded in capturing Gran? He hadn’t had to deal with that one. What would he have done?

Luna dipped her head; her pale hair hid her face. She said in her softest tones, “I told you I felt sorry for Draco. It was pretty obvious, when I was there, that Mr. Ollivander and I weren’t the only prisoners at Malfoy Manor. Mr. Malfoy was even disarmed. Draco and his parents had better accommodations and more regular meals, is all. Only they had to deal directly with Mr. Riddle, so that balanced out. In my favor, I rather thought.”

Neville said slowly, “So you think Draco was willing to do things that could be passed off as mistakes or incompetence or overlooking things—for which HE would be punished alone—but which wouldn’t give an excuse to hurt his parents? He was trying to shelter them?”

He looked at the professor, who had lain back in his bed and was breathing heavily again. The professor said nothing.

Neville thought for a time. “Professor Snape. It’s still about how things look. What’s the biggest obstacle we face, in getting people to believe that Malfoy was risking torture to do what he could for our side?”

“The Room of Hidden Things,” sighed the professor. His body sagged on the narrow bed. “It was completely idiotic of Draco to try to intercept Potter; I have no idea what the fool boy thought he was doing. I don’t believe that Ron Weasley’s interpretation was correct, but it was a compelling story, convincingly narrated. And it completely countered the impression left by Draco’s reluctance to identify the prisoners.”

“Well, that’s an easy place to start,” Neville said, relieved. “Get some rest, and we’ll see Harry and be back tomorrow with his memory of that incident.”

*

Snape, waiting to watch the memory, was even tenser than the day before. Neville looked at him, concerned and confused. Luna gave the professor one glance, Neville another, and then tugged Neville back out of the private room, saying, “Excuse us a moment, sir.”

She cast a Silencing Charm and turned on Neville. “Neville—this is the memory ending in Vincent Crabbe’s death.”

“Well, yes, but… it’s not like Crabbe didn’t deserve it, you know! He cast the spell himself that ended up killing him, just like Voldemort did with Harry! And—he was the best in Carrow’s class; he was the first to cast the Cruciatus—”

Neville’s voice stopped suddenly. Luna waited a beat and then said into Neville’s silence, “And he never seemed to be sorry about it? Well, no, he didn’t. But the headmaster didn’t try only to protect the ones he thought were deserving. Whether the criterion was blood purity, or house, or moral worth as defined by Gryffindors. He tried to save us all. And he failed. Vincent Crabbe was one of those who died because he failed.”

Neville bit his lip and nodded. Luna regarded him for a moment, then they re-entered with the silver phial.

Even so, Neville found it easy, today, to keep his eyes on the thin silver figures rather than on Snape’s solid silent one, and he didn’t cry. Though he did shiver sickly at the sound of the flames.

When the memory finished playing, the professor lay back on his bed, white and grim, eyes shut. After a time he opened those impossibly black eyes and said, “It would be best to find independent corroboration.”

Luna said easily, “Of what, sir? I missed it this time.”

That made Neville feel a little better, though he blushed when the headmaster looked at _him_ with a lifted eyebrow. After a moment the professor said, “Think of it as a training exercise for your Army, Mr. Longbottom. Had you given a team the task of kidnapping an enemy, how would you afterwards critique a team member, who, with a clear line of sight on the unaware enemy’s back, chose to call out, ‘Hold it!’ rather than cast a simple Stunning Spell?”

“Oh!” Neville gasped. “He was warning Harry?”

One corner of the professor’s mouth twitched.

Luna replayed the memory, and this time Neville groaned and put his head in his hands. “Everything—everything Malfoy was saying and doing was—and I missed it the first time!”

The headmaster smirked slightly. “Most people, most of the time, see only what they expect.”

Luna smiled at Snape. “Which you certainly managed to exploit, sir, so you shouldn’t complain!”

Neville said, his confusion deepening, “But—then why did he bring them there at all?”

“I very much doubt that it was his idea. As I said, I think we should find independent corroboration. Mr. Gregory Goyle’s memory of the events immediately preceding these should do nicely.”

“So someone will have to go to Azkaban—who can do that, sir?”

The headmaster thought. “If Madam Pomfrey was willing—she’s eminently qualified, and while I should doubt that she likes the boy overmuch, he has no cause to distrust her.”

*

Madam Pomfrey was perfectly willing to help them, but it took a few days to get her clearance to visit Goyle. Meanwhile the professor worked with Luna and occasionally Professor Flitwick on perfecting the Veesiar spells for the Pensieve. Neville’s presence seemed not to be needed for that.

Once the professor had modified the Pensieve-display spells a little more (mysteriously, he called what he was doing “developing functions”), the memory Neville had coaxed from Harry of the actual escape from Malfoy Manor yielded an unanticipated result. Or at least, a result which Neville hadn’t anticipated; he suspected that Snape, and even Luna, might not have been so surprised.

Goyle’s memory, however, when Madam Pomfrey finally obtained it, was somewhat unexpected. The professor’s first hypothesis was confirmed, but as for the rest…. Neville stared in alarm at Luna. This—did not serve their case at all. Were they wrong? How could they be? Neville, frantic, started sorting mentally through the other memories, trying to make sense of how these new facts would fit.

The professor himself was scowling fiercely, his brows drawn down, his mouth pinched.

Luna said doubtfully, “I suppose we could just show the first part….”

 

“That would be dishonest,” Neville answered primly. “But—what did Draco think he was doing?”

 

“What did Draco think…?” the professor repeated, and his eyes widened suddenly. Then he began to choke, and couldn’t stop.

The professor started coughing blood, which he hadn’t done for days now. It was only after Madam Pomfrey had chased Neville and Luna out that Neville realized that the professor had been laughing. Helplessly, harshly, horribly.

*

The professor’s face was white again, but his eyes glittered with macabre humor. Luna marched up to him and folded her arms. “Are you going to tell us, Professor?”

His lips curved. “I think … not. I should imagine that if we save that matter for last, Draco’s reputation should have been well-enough re-established that the court will allow Draco to speak for himself and explain what he thought he was doing. In fact….” The professor tapped one finger against his lips. “I assume you’ve been keeping Mr. Potter apprised of the use we’ve been making of his memories?”

Luna and Neville nodded in tandem, and Neville said, “We’ve been showing him, too, sir. He’s been interested. And a bit sorry he didn’t say more, or more convincingly, at Draco’s trial.”

Luna added, “We thought it possible that we might need to use his influence to get them to schedule a retrial. Harry’s very popular right now.”

The professor favored them with a wintry smile and a nod. “Well reasoned. I should assume then that the noble Mr. Potter has every intention of attending his enemy’s retrial, should it be held?”

Neville nodded; of course Harry did.

The professor smirked. “I think that Mr. Potter should ask Mr. Malfoy to explain himself. I am confident that Mr. Malfoy would be delighted to avail himself of the opportunity.”

Neville regarded him suspiciously, but the professor refused to say more.

*

“Me, Professor?” Neville squeaked. “I mean, the formal request was submitted in my name, but I thought you would be the one doing the actual talking!”

Professor Snape lay flat on his bed. His eyes glittered at Neville. Neville’s heart sank; he and Luna must have exhausted the professor, these last few days, in the feverish final preparations for the Wizengamot.

The man’s pale lips pulled back from his teeth in a near-snarl. “Mr. Longbottom. Even were I vertical and capable of orating for long periods, you, whether you like it or not, are the Hero of Hogwarts, Potter’s Friend, the Leader of Dumbledore’s Army, Nagini’s Slayer, Destroyer of the Last Horcrux.”

His voice went to pure acid. “Et cetera. Yes?”

Neville blushed and nodded mutely. Professor Snape fixed him with those black eyes.

“I trust, Mr. Longbottom, that you heard the capital letters in that list of titles; in fact, I am rather relying on the hope that you did, and that you value them as you should. This and this only, is what those titles are good for: to impress fools. “

The professor paused to glare again at Neville.

“So USE them.”

As Neville stood gaping, the professor added, “By Wizengamot tradition, the one calling the assembly and making the case before the body chooses (or is) the interrogator and controls all speakers. To the extent that he or she is able to do so. We all of us, therefore, depend on your ability, Mr. Longbottom, to control those desiring to speak.”

Snape’s voice was cutting, sardonic, and inexplicably confident.

*


	4. The Protean Charm, Part IV

Truth is slippery. Mutable. You have to hold tightly to what is real while everything around it shifts shape ….  
*  


Harry Potter stood in front of the courtroom, looking nervous but determined in his new dress robes. Neville stood back next to Luna and her two Pensieves with the phials ordered before her. The school’s Pensieve and the Ministry’s were already loaded with the first sets of memories.

 

(“ _Rhythm_ ,” the professor had lectured them. _“Load the next memory before the first has finished; hit them fast. Don’t give them time to regroup from the emotional impact. Don’t ’let yourself be distracted by the content.”_ )

 

Luna was surprisingly almost imposing-looking in a bronze robe with blue accents and no weird jewelry; she said Madam Pomfrey had taken her shopping.

 

Neville watched the Ministry flunkies bring in Draco. The other wizard was thin and hollow-eyed in his shabby prison robe. But the worst was the way he huddled into himself hopelessly, letting the burly Aurors drag him along and shove him into the chair. The golden manacles snapped shut; Draco didn’t react. And he didn’t look up at anyone.

 

Neville decided, with a twinge of disappointment, that Draco thought that they couldn’t pull it off. Well, Neville would show him. He’d show everyone.

 

Harry stepped forward and fidgeted a little before the stares of the assembled elders. He cleared his throat and said, “Erm. Thank you for hearing us again. When I testified at Malfoy’s first trial, I asked you to go light on him. But if I’d looked at my own memories in a Pensieve, I’d have asked a lot more. The headmaster—I mean, Professor Dumbledore—spent a lot of time showing me memories in his Pensieve to give me clues for finding Voldemort’s Horcruxes. But I’m told—” he flashed a quick look at a silent black figure in the audience section, “that most witches and wizards have never used one. So you need to understand, first, a little how it works when you see a memory. I mean it’s obvious that if you can look at one of your own memories from the outside afterwards, maybe you’ll notice something that you didn’t at the time. Or, um, something you might have been too prejudiced to notice at the time. Like I found, looking at my own memories, that I usually remember myself as saying things better than I really did, and, um, my enemies worse. The Pensieve shows what everyone really did say, which is sort of rude of it, really.”

 

He grinned a little, and there was scattered laughter.

 

“But see, the really weird thing about the Pensieve is that you can also move around inside the memory and see things you _couldn’t_ have seen at the time. Like someone who had his back to you when something actually happened, in a Pensieve you can walk around and see his expression. I’m, um, told that anything or anyone within line of sight or hearing at the time of the original memory is reproduced accurately. So you can go look at someone up close who was off at the edge and you didn’t really notice at the time. Or, um, one of my memories, I’d been hexed, I could hardly see at the time. But in the Pensieve the vision is clear.”

Harry moved a little forward, and his voice got louder. “What Neville and Luna are going to show you today is mostly my own memories of Draco Malfoy’s words and actions. But they’re going to use the Pensieve to show things I witnessed but didn’t notice at the time. Or I would have told you when we were here before. They’ve, um, they’ve found a way to display the images so you don’t have to physically enter the Pensieve to see them. But these are my memories, unaltered. There is no way that Malfoy could have influenced them in any way; none of us has had contact with him between his first trial and today.

“I solemnly swear that what you’re going to see are my own memories, accurately reproduced, except for one memory from another person which will be so noted when it’s played. And these memories-MY memories,” Harry screwed up his eyes to concentrate, “establish conclusively that Draco Malfoy had switched his loyalty to our side by at least the beginning of last school year, that he deliberately concealed information from Riddle and the Death Eaters to protect other students from the Carrows, risking torture and death to do so, and that he protected and aided ME, knowing that doing so would guarantee that he and his family would face Riddle’s punishment. And knowing that that punishment would at the _least_ be the Cruciatus Curse, and might well be death.”

 

Harry swallowed, straightened, and continued, “So I—we—invoke the precedent set by this body sixteen years ago, when at Professor Dumbledore’s urging you dropped all charges against S-Severus Snape in recognition of his, his courage and willingness to risk torture and death to atone for his crimes. Draco Malfoy showed the same courage and willingness to atone; we therefore ask that this body grant Malfoy the same justice.”

 

Red-faced, Harry stepped back; Neville knew that Harry had worked with Dumbledore’s portrait to create and memorize the last portions of that speech.

 

His turn now. Neville straightened and prepared to step forward, swinging his own heavy new robes about him. But he glanced first over at Draco, and he stumbled.

 

Draco was gaping at Harry. Then he twisted in his bonds until he spotted his mother and the professor. His face was white and strained, his eyes huge. The professor nodded once, like the chop of a wand casting Reducto. Mrs. Malfoy, beside him, smiled tremulously. Draco squeezed his eyes shut and seemed to collapse.

 

With a surge of rage, Neville realized that they—they who?—must not have told Draco what this new hearing was for.

 

Neville had had opportunities, this last year, to learn how to use rage—to use it, not to vent it in ranting or stupid gestures. This fucking _petty_ piece of cruelty was _useful_ ; he had to remember that. It gave him valuable information on exactly how hostile the Wizengamot really was to this former Voldemort supporter. Neville could almost hear a chill voice rasping assessments in his ear.

 

Neville took a breath to steady himself, nodded coolly at Malfoy (who didn’t notice, still struggling, eyes squeezed shut, to contain his reaction), and turned to the Wizengamot, that august body. “We thank you first, for agreeing to witness this new evidence. We are grateful that you’re taking such pains to avert the possibility of a miscarriage of justice, such as we know have, alas, occurred in years past.”

 

Neville smiled sweetly upon his elders. “I think that you will find that we can make an incontrovertible case for Draco Malfoy’s change of loyalties and willingness to risk unspeakable dangers to help our side. To risk far more, indeed, than mos—than many here today might claim.”

 

Neville had spent much of last year learning to set ambushes and to evaluate their results; he noted carefully which Wizengamot members shifted at his words. He let his smile at them widen. “We ask only that you view our evidence without … prejudice.”

His audience was silent. Neville said, “The first point we wish to establish is that Draco Malfoy was, in fact, capable of concealing information from Voldemort if he so chose. Most of us, of course, including myself, could not, not if Riddle interrogated us personally. Nor could we successfully lie to Riddle’s face, for Riddle was an accomplished and remorseless Legilimens. So in order to deceive him, Mr. Malfoy, like Professor Snape, would need to be a skilled Occlumens. And he is.”

 

He nodded at Luna. She bent over the first Pensieve, and Harry’s silver figure formed in the air. He was leaning against a door, listening to the Professor’s distinctive former voice say, “Ah—your Aunt Bellatrix has been teaching you Occlumency, I see. But what are you trying to conceal from your master?”

 

The silver figure vanished. Into the silence Neville said firmly, “Our contention is that, having learned Occlumency in Riddle’s service, Draco Malfoy then turned that skill against his former master. Professor Snape, will you give us your professional judgment as to whether Draco Malfoy’s skill at Occluding was sufficient to allow him to deceive Voldemort?”

 

Madam Pomfrey pursed her lips disapprovingly, but she cast the Sonorus Charm on the stiff black figure beside her. She watched the former headmaster, her eyes narrowed and her wand ready, the whole time he spoke. But the voice never faltered, though its hoarseness was magnified by the charm. “My apologies, first, for my inadvertent discourtesy in failing to stand before you. As you may know, I am as yet physically incapable of doing so.

 

“The two greatest Legilimens of my acquaintance were Albus Dumbledore and Tom Riddle. Professor Dumbledore was the more skillful; Riddle tried to make up the difference by brute force. Nor was my own skill entirely contemptible. Draco Malfoy’s skill at Occlumency was sufficiently developed when he _entered_ his sixth year at Hogwarts that he was able to conceal from both Dumbledore and myself that he had already taken steps to execute the task the Dark Lord had set him. Nor was either of us ever able to discover any detail of his plans.”

Snape took a dragging breath, amplified by Madam Pomfrey’s Sonorus, and continued, “Obviously, neither the headmaster nor myself was at liberty to use the full spell on Draco; we had neither Ministry authorization nor the boy’s consent. But to conceal information from even passive Legilimency of Dumbledore’s power requires a high level of proficiency. I should strongly doubt that Draco Malfoy could have stood up to one of the Dark Lord’s more brutal probes. But the Dark Lord never saw reason to make him face that. If Draco Malfoy was capable of dissembling to Dumbledore’s face, as he proved that he was, he was capable of deceiving Riddle. If he dared.”

The professor’s cold eyes passed slowly from one face to another of the Wizengamot, as though he were daring them to challenge or question his judgment. There was some surreptitious whispering, but no one chose to speak aloud.

 

Neville cleared his throat and addressed the court again. “We will now prove that Mr. Malfoy knew all through last year both how the members of Dumbledore’s Army were communicating with each other and how to get into the Room of Requirement, where the members of Dumbledore’s Army met, and, later, took refuge. The Carrows were mad to discover both things; the headmaster, er, convincingly pretended to be. So at any time during the school year, Draco Malfoy could have ingratiated himself with the Death Eaters by betraying us. Moreover, he took a considerable risk in concealing the information—had it come out that he knew, he’d have been tortured for his mistake if he managed to pass it off as a mere lapse. Had Riddle realized that Mr. Malfoy was deliberately suppressing the information, he’d have killed Draco, probably slowly, for treason. Bear that in mind as you watch the following. The first is a piece of Harry’s memory from the, the night on the Astronomy Tower; you won’t see Harry himself because he was under his invisibility cloak.”

 

(The professor had advised, “ _Always use Potter’s first name. Rub it in that you’re on a first-name basis with the Chosen One._ ”)

 

The room hushed in anticipation. When Dumbledore’s figure appeared, however, the silence grew deathly. In silence the Wizengamot listened to the would-be murderer brag of using charmed Galleons to communicate with Rosmerta. In silence they listened to Dumbledore’s silver form ask, “Isn’t that the secret method of communication the group that called themselves Dumbledore’s Army used last year?”

 

Silver-Draco said, with a twisted smile, “Yeah, I got the idea from them.”

 

Luna cut off the memory. Real-Draco bowed his head, his eyes shut tight. He was almost as pale as his memory-wraith. Torchlight sparked off the golden chains; the whole room could see the chains twinkling as Draco shuddered.

 

Neville composed himself to speak. “The point we wish you to consider here is that Draco Malfoy knew with absolute certainty how we in the D.A. were communicating. And over the course of the entire last school year, he succeeded in concealing that information from the Carrows, the other Death Eaters, and Tom Riddle. No conceivable advantage accrued to Draco from concealing that; he was protecting us. And I remind you again, had he been caught he would have been punished by torture or death, depending on whether Riddle deemed it an innocent mistake or the deliberate betrayal that it was.”

Luna looked at him with an odd little smile; with a start, Neville realized he’d been unconsciously quoting the professor’s diatribe. ‘No conceivable advantage accrued?’ Well, the professor was far more eloquent than any Longbottom; Neville let it stand. He glanced over to where a clump of D. A. members were sitting behind Harry, Ron, and Hermione; Parvati and Ernie fished out their Galleons, and an excited buzz rose. Neville silenced them with a look.

He continued, “The next memory we will view takes place in the Room of Requirement, when Draco and his cronies confronted Harry, Ron, and Hermione. We will later review this memory in full; I wish to make a single point now.”

 

Silver-Harry demanded, “How’d you get in?”

 

Silver-Draco sneered, “I practically lived in the Room last year.”

 

Luna’s wand slashed the air; the figures vanished.

 

Neville said, “Mr. Malfoy knew that the D.A. had previously met there; he had, in our fifth year, helped Ministry officials to lay a trap for members, though he was not then aware of the room’s exact location. But he certainly knew the location seventh year, and he was able to get in, even when others were already using the room. Last January, the D. A. had a close call. Crabbe and Goyle, without Malfoy—odd that, isn’t it? — came looking to see if we might be using the room, and they managed to follow a member in. Fortunately, we were able to overpower them and Obliviate them, and after that we, er, managed to figure out how to seal the room against outsiders. But before then Draco Malfoy could clearly have let the Carrows in on us; it’s impossible to imagine why he did not, unless he was committed to protecting us. And I remind you, had he been caught protecting us in this manner, he would have been tortured or killed.”

Most of the Ravenclaw D. A. members were sitting bolt upright and staring at Draco, but Michael was nodding in satisfaction. Seamus goggled like a goldfish. Ernie looked between Draco and his Galleon like he wanted to argue but couldn’t. Susan and Hannah were giving Draco looks of horrified sympathy; he’d be lucky to escape being group-hugged by them.

Neville gave the Wizengamot a moment to absorb the D.A.’s reaction. Then he continued, “Next, I wish to address Harry Potter’s previous testimony before this body, that Draco Malfoy had been, I quote, ‘reluctant’, to identify Harry, Ron, and Hermione to the Snatchers. Harry had, at the time, been hexed in a manner which almost blinded him. If you look at Harry’s own memory without this blindness, it’s absolutely clear that Draco Malfoy went well past “reluctance.” He was determined to avoid identifying them if he possibly could, and he was distraught when his efforts to protect their anonymity failed. Luna?”

The memory played; the assembly watched in silence. Luna had practiced for three days, under the professor’s rain of criticism; now she slowed, stopped, and shifted viewpoints artistically. Finally, silver-Bellatrix sauntered into view. At the sound of his aunt’s voice, silver-Draco slumped a little against the mantle and ground his face into the marble. Luna froze the figure and turned it. Draco’s silver eyes were shut; his mouth was contorted in despair.

Luna let the image move again; slumping a little further, the memory-figure started to shake and clenched his fists. Then he straightened up and opened his eyes; by the time he turned to face the others, the silver face was absolutely blank.

The real Draco, staring at his magnified image, was almost equally blank-faced.

Neville announced, “At the time the Snatchers brought Harry, Ron, & Hermione to Malfoy Manor, they had twice been within reach of Death Eaters and slipped away. Rowle and Dolohov, Travers and Selwyn, and Luna’s father, had all been punished severely for letting Harry get away.

“Ah—by ‘punished severely,’ I mean, of course, that they were tortured with the Cruciatus Curse. Rowle and Dolohov, moreover, were two of Riddle’s most able fighters; the Malfoys, in contrast, were already in a precarious position, out of the Dark Lord’s favor. Indeed, Lucius Malfoy’s anxiety to re-establish his family in favor was his driving motivation that night. So Draco Malfoy would have expected his family to be punished as badly or worse for a like offense. Possibly even killed; you saw how terrified Narcissa Malfoy was of turning in a false alarm.

_“Deliberately_ impeding Harry’s capture or helping to release him would have guaranteed Malfoy’s own torture and execution, possibly his whole family’s. Doing so by _accident_ would be punished, certainly, but possibly short of death. But Malfoy had no actual assurance of that. The Cruciatus was the _minimum_ punishment suffered by those who’d previously let Harry slip away. Please bear that in mind as you watch the following.

“This is how Harry managed to escape from Malfoy Manor. You’ve all heard the story, of course: of how the brave house-elf, Dobby, Apparated away the other prisoners and created a distraction, of how Harry captured his captors’ wands, and of how Dobby was fatally injured even as they Apparated away…. But here’s a part of the story you need, not to hear, but to _see._ ”

Luna dipped her wand and incanted soundlessly.

The silver-chandelier fell and exploded, sending crystal shards everywhere. Most of the watchers in the chamber flinched involuntarily, even Neville.

Silver-Draco doubled over, his hands covering his bloody face. Silver-Harry leapt over an armchair and wrested the three wands from Draco’s grip. _“Stupefy!”_ he screamed, and the werewolf was blasted off his feet by a triple jet of light. Draco’s mother dragged her son out of the fray, then turned to the door and screamed at her former house elf, who promptly disarmed her. Bellatrix brandished a silver knife like the lunatic she was, raging at Dobby. Harry yelled, “Ron, catch—and GO!” Ron, cradling Hermione, grabbed a wand from midair and stood to spin… Harry grabbed at the trapped goblin, and then reached for Dobby’s hand… And Draco and his mother stood frozen as Bellatrix, spitting, threw her knife at the little elf’s heart—

Luna poked the Pensieve, and the flow of images stopped.

Neville said softly, “You may have noticed how curiously incompetent Draco was in this fight. I myself have seen him do better in other circumstances. But you won’t have seen the truth yet. Look again. Watch closely. This time, watch Draco’s hands.”

He was gratified to see that much of his audience leaned forward.

Luna played the memory again, much more slowly and doubled in size.

Draco’s bleeding left hand tightly covered his eyes as he crouched, rocked, and moaned. His right hand loosely held three wands. Harry’s hand fastened on the wands, and Draco’s fingers slackened.

Luna stopped the images. Neville looked up at the Wizengamot and said, “Draco played Seeker against Harry for five years; he knew how Harry reacts, how fast he is. And think for a moment: if you’re fighting an enemy who tries to disarm you, you grab tighter to your wand, not let it go. I imagine that Draco told Voldemort afterwards, absolutely truthfully, that he’d just been blinded by a face full of glass and never even saw Potter coming.”

Neville glanced at the professor. “Professor Snape told me once that the key to lying to Voldemort was, use the truth.”

The professor’s eyelids shivered in acknowledgement. Neville straightened in response.

Draco was staring at Luna and her Pensieves. He whispered, “I was sure it couldn’t be proved. In fact, I rather gambled all our lives on its never even being suspected. This is … actually a little embarrassing.”

Neville said, “I might mention that Draco did not just risk torture to help Harry escape, he received it, he and his family both. I did not like to ask Mrs. Malfoy for her memory of how her family was punished by the Dark Lord for letting Harry escape, and Harry has told you that we haven’t been in contact with either Draco or Lucius. But if you think it necessary, we do have another memory you could see. Or rather, mostly hear. That memory was taken from the sole surviving Snatcher who had been at Malfoy Manor that night. Voldemort punished the three Malfoys first, all together, while the Snatchers waited their turn outside the door. After the screaming stops, you can see the Malfoys’ unconscious bodies when the Snatchers are summoned in for their share of the punishment. Mrs. Lestrange was punished separately at the end.”

Neville stared coldly at his elders. “Does anyone feel the need to review the Snatcher’s memory, or do you accept our word that Voldemort punished the Malfoys quite… adequately… for Harry’s escape? We are happy to enter this memory into evidence, should you feel it necessary.”

Neville turned his most innocent gaze on the chief witch of the Wizengamot, the one who, he calculated, must have ordered that Draco be brought in ignorant of the purpose of the hearing, and added sweetly, “Or, of course, should you personally take pleasure in listening to Malfoys screaming in agony under Voldemort’s wand.”

Her thin lips barely opened. “It is not necessary to enter that memory into evidence, Mr. Longbottom. We accept your assurance that Voldemort punished the Malfoys, ah, adequately, as you said.”

Neville gave her his best smile. “Thank you. The final item we wish to address is Ronald Weasley’s very damaging testimony before this body during Mr. Malfoy’s first trial. Ron testified, as I am sure you recall, that Draco Malfoy made up for his reluctance to identify them at Malfoy Manor by attempting to kidnap them from the Room of Requirement. He suggested that Malfoy must have repented of his former softness, and decided to capture Harry to get back in the Dark Lord’s favor. However, Ron’s account of the events of that day was mistaken, as we will now show.”

Next to Harry, a red-haired form stiffened in indignation. Harry’s and Hermione’s hands were on his arms; it looked as though they were restraining him. Neville gave the three of them a brief, real, smile. “I am NOT suggesting that Ron Weasley would ever dream of lying to this court; he reported truthfully what he saw and what he made of it. I think that when you see the following, you’ll entirely understand why Ron testified as he did. Especially bearing in mind that during Ron’s time at Hogwarts, Malfoy was always both the leader and the brains of his trio of friends.”

Luna played the memory. When it finished, she left, larger than life, a final still image of silver-Draco crouched amidst the dissipating silver smoke. She had rotated it so the tears were visible on the ash-smeared face.

(Professor Snape had told them, _“The more thoughtless of them have declared Slytherins to be incapable of true loyalty or affection; a libel which my own actions may be seen, in some lights, most unfortunately to confirm. Rub their noses in Draco’s grief for his friend. He won’t like his feelings being exposed, but it will help the case.”_ )

A few people were coughing in involuntary sympathy with the silver figures. Neville waited until silence was complete to speak. “I think we can all agree that Ron’s interpretation of events was perfectly sincere and accurate as he saw it. According to that interpretation, the only virtue here displayed by Draco Malfoy was loyalty to his friends: he wouldn’t abandon Gregory Goyle even to save his own life, and he sincerely grieved for Vincent Crabbe even though it was Crabbe’s own stupidity and malevolence in casting Fiendfyre that very nearly killed them all.”

Neville favored his elders with another smile, sympathetic this time. It was the expression Ginny had christened his “Longbottom Look”—or in full, “The Longbottom ‘I know exactly how you feel but you haven’t thought it through quite yet, have you?’ Look,” The Look seemed to work as well on the Wizengamot as on fellow D. A. members who’d come up with yet another _suicidal_ plan for defying the Carrows. Most of Neville’s audience straightened a little guiltily in their chairs and tried to look intelligent.

From the corner of his eye, Neville saw Ron poke Harry and whisper something, nodding vehemently. Harry grimaced and turned red, shaking his head.

Making sure he had his audience’s full attention, Neville turned to Draco, who was still huddled, white, in his shackles. He spoke for the first time directly to the prisoner. “I’m very sorry to have made you relive your friend’s death, Malfoy. But the court needed to understand what was going on.”

Draco raised his chin to look directly at Neville; the grey eyes met Neville’s and widened. After a moment Draco dipped his head in a tight nod, his lips compressed.

Neville turned back to the Wizengamot. “What I will now show this body is that a very different interpretation than Ron’s is possible, and indeed required. Professor Snape invited me to review this sequence of events as though I were critiquing a training exercise for Dumbledore’s Army. Say I’d assigned a team the task of trying to kidnap an enemy….”

Luna re-started the memory; silver-Draco’s voice called out, “Hold it, Potter!”

The four figures froze in mid-air, Harry half-twisted, Draco peering between the two larger forms.

Neville said conversationally, “Had I assigned a team of three the task of kidnapping an opponent, I’d have had something to say to a team member who, with a straight shot at the enemy’s back, stopped to chit chat instead of just casting a stunner. In fact, one could almost wonder whether Draco might be… warning his unwary opponent. The other thing I didn’t see at all, actually, until the professor pointed it out. Luna is now going to show you some other memories of Harry’s, um, past confrontations with Draco and his friends.”

He nodded at Luna; the second Pensieve displayed image after image, the flow carefully pre-edited. Silver-Malfoy, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle, stepped forward belligerently; a tiny silver boy flanked by two larger ones shouldered his way into a train compartment; Malfoy, face twisted in a sneer, shouted something unintelligible, while Crabbe and Goyle lumbered behind him….

The final image froze in a triangle of forms, silver-Malfoy the forward point, and Neville said, “You’ll note the difference. In all these memories when Mr. Malfoy was leading his friends against Potter, he’s in the _lead_ or in the middle. Yet in the Room of Hidden Things, he’s behind them. Almost as if… he were trying to restrain the other two…? Harry, of course, assumed that Draco was the leader, based on past history, and addressed him as such. But is that actually what we _see?”_

Luna tapped the Pensieves; one triangle of forms vanished, and the other inverted set of figures started moving again.

Silver-Harry asked, “So how come you three aren’t with Voldemort?”

Silver-Crabbe smiled like a greedy child and replied, “We’re gonna be rewarded. We ‘ung back, Potter. We decided not to go. Decided to bring you to ‘im.”

Luna froze the image, and Neville remarked mildly, “You’ll observe that it’s Crabbe, not Draco, who answers Harry.”

The figures moved…. Silver-Crabbe whipped his wand at the mountain of junk and shouted, _“Descendo!”_

The images froze to allow Neville to comment, “Note that it’s Crabbe who initiates the attack.”

Silver-Draco shouted, “No!” He grabbed Crabbe’s arm and hung on to it as the other silver form struggled to raise his wand again. “If you wreck the room you might bury this diadem thing!”

Crabbe tugged himself free and glared at the smaller wizard. “What’s that matter? It’s Potter the Dark Lord wants, who cares about a die-dum?”

Draco said impatiently, “Potter came in here to get it, so that must mean—”

“’Must mean’?” Crabbe snarled. “Who cares what you think? I don’t take your orders no more, _Draco._ You an’ your dad are finished!”

The silver images froze; Neville murmured, “Crabbe says outright here that he’s not taking Malfoy’s orders. Notice that Goyle, this whole time, simply stands there, seemingly confused. You may possibly also have registered that Draco has just prevented Crabbe from sending a tonne of rubbish crashing down atop Ron and Hermione. You may conceivably have noted as well that Draco’s concerned that the diadem not be buried—which would have put it _out of Harry’s reach._ But it’s Harry, not Riddle, who wanted the diadem found. Riddle wanted that diadem safely hidden, buried, the deeper the better.”

Real-Draco looked hard at Neville for a moment; then he twisted to trade glances with the professor. Neville motioned to Luna.  
 _  
“Crucio!”_ shouted silver-Crabbe; silver-Draco grabbed Crabbe’s arm as he cast, and the curse went wide as Harry lunged towards the statue.

“NO!” screamed memory-Draco, so loudly that his projected voice echoed in the real chamber. “The Dark Lord wants him alive—“

Into the silence after the echoes died Neville said conversationally, “The same argument, of course, that Professor Snape used to stop Rowle from using the Cruciatus on Harry when the Death Eaters were fleeing from Hogwarts just over a year ago. Unfortunately, the argument is fallacious. I am given to understand that the Dark Lord made it clear that bringing Harry to him _alive_ in no way required his followers to bring him Harry _unhurt._ In fact, I am told that, although generally pleased with the accomplishments of the evening in question, the Dark Lord was somewhat… annoyed… that his followers had passed up such an opportunity to torture and capture Harry, and that he, ah, punished them for that lapse in judgment.”

Neville was quoting again; by the way Luna’s mouth quirked, he had achieved close to Professor Snape’s cadences. When the professor had told _them,_ it had taken Neville nearly a minute to figure out what he’d been told. Most of his audience seemed a bit quicker on the uptake. Harry paled and gave a quick glance at the impassive black figure across the room. Then he did a double take and turned to stare at Draco. Draco stared back, his lip curling a little. But the prisoner was sitting straight in his manacled chair now, chin high.

Neville allowed a moment to let his audience watch Draco and Harry stare at each other; then he added for good measure, “Interestingly, Crabbe remembered Riddle’s counterargument perfectly, as you’ll review in a moment. Yet Mr. Malfoy, who was actually there for—who received a share of--the original punishment, apparently … ah… forgot.”

Draco half shut his eyes and drawled, “My memory was shockingly bad last year, Longbottom. It was quite sad, really.”

Neville shot back, “Yeah, I actually did notice that in Carrow’s class. Outperformed by Crabbe and Goyle, that was shocking, all right. But it took Luna to point out the implications, or my testimony the last time we were both here would have been a bit different.”

Draco’s grey eyes gleamed suddenly, and his lips parted. But, no doubt wisely, he shut his mouth without speaking again. With a little difficulty, Neville dragged his attention back to his target audience and stammered, “Um, Luna?”

Silver-Crabbe shook off silver-Draco’s restraining arm and yelled, “So? I’m not killing him, am I? But if I can, I will, the Dark Lord wants him dead anyhow, what’s the diff—?”

Silver-Hermione popped into view and aimed; Draco pulled Crabbe back as a jet of light shot past them both. Crabbe roared, “It’s that Mudblood! _Avada Kedavra_!”

Hermione dove aside. Harry, looking furious, shot another bolt of light at Crabbe. Crabbe lurched away from Harry’s spell, knocking the wand from Draco’s hand and sending him tumbling to the floor. Goyle shook himself a little, seeming to wake up. The two larger wizards aimed their wands at Harry.

Draco made no attempt to recover his wand; he was struggling to his feet and screaming at his friends, ‘Don’t kill him. DON’T KILL HIM!”

They hesitated for a moment, and Harry’s shouted “ _Expelliarmus_ ” knocked the wand from Goyle’s hand. …

“ _Avada Kedavra_!” shrieked Crabbe again, this time at Ron….

Crabbe, running behind Ron, roared, “Like it hot, scum?” Behind him in turn ran the hungry flames of the Fiendfyre—

Luna cut the memory off. Ron had sunk his face in his hands and was shaking his head slowly. Neville looked at the gathered witches and wizards with his best Longbottom Look. “I think that’s rather clear, don’t you? Draco called out in warning when Crabbe and Goyle ambushed Harry; he stopped Crabbe from crushing Ron and Hermione; he tried to persuade Crabbe to let Harry find the diadem; he physically stopped Crabbe from casting the Cruciatus on Harry, tried to dissuade him from attempting it again, and kept his companions from killing Harry. It was Crabbe who cast Unforgiveables, tried to kill Harry, Ron and Hermione, and invoked Fiendfyre.”

Neville let his smile widen just a trifle and reach his eyes. “And, of course, it was Crabbe who’d had the brainstorm of kidnapping Harry in the first place. Draco tried to talk his friends out of it, and came along to protect Harry when he was unsuccessful. Madam Pomfrey?”

Madam Pomfrey rose and stepped down onto the floor. She said crisply, “I am Poppy Pomfrey, Matron of Hogwarts’ Hospital Wing. As such, I am trained and legally qualified to extract memories from witnesses. Two weeks ago, at Professor Snape’s request, I visited Gregory Goyle in Azkaban. I personally extracted the memory you are next to see. In accordance with the laws of evidence, I viewed this memory first myself before turning it over to the requestors, Mr. Longbottom and Miss Lovegood. I attest that what you are about to view is Mr. Goyle’s unaltered memory of earlier events of the evening in question.”

She nodded to the assembly and went composedly back to her seat beside the professor. Neville gestured to Luna.

Silvery forms of the Slytherin students followed Filch out of the Great Hall in a disorganized mass; most of them had shocked, pale faces. Parkinson was shaking and clutching Greenglass’s arm, saying over and over in a high, tight voice, “Do you think he’ll punish us? Do you think he’ll punish us? For not trying?”

Silver-Draco turned a little in the doorway to look back; his satellites slowed and turned too. The Headmistress’s voice sounded sharply over the hubbub, “Potter, isn’t there something you should be looking for?”

Harry started. Draco stared at him and then turned, practically shoving Goyle and Crabbe forward. They hurried through the corridors a little behind the other Slytherins.

After a few turns, Crabbe started moving more slowly, his brows knit; Draco turned his head and snapped, “Vince, keep up! What’s wrong with you?”

Crabbe was scowling as he shuffled along. Suddenly his long arms shot out and grabbed the other two. He pulled them into an empty classroom and stared at them. They stared back, looking bemused. “Vince, what’s gotten into you?” Draco demanded.

Crabbe licked his lips and said, “We could do it.”

“Do what?”

“Catch ‘im. Catch Potter. We could. And then _we’d_ be the Dark Lord’s favorites.”

Draco looked appalled. After an instant’s pause he shot back, “You’re mad, Vince. My Aunt Bellatrix and a whole herd of Snatchers couldn’t hold on to Potter; the three of us could never manage.” He shuddered. “And you know what _He’ll_ do to us if we try and Potter slips through our fingers—”

“Yeah, but you ‘eard Pansy. ’e might anyhow if we don’ try. We’ll just have to do it right, not mess it up like your family.” An ugly look came over Crabbe’s face. “Whatsa matter, don’ you wanna? We’ve beat Potter before, we just gotta be sneaky. And then the Dark Lord will like us best.”

Goyle said, with dawning enthusiasm, “Yeah, he’ll like us best! Better’n Professor Snape even.”

Draco looked from one to the other. He said slowly, ‘Yeah, but you’re right, we have to be sneaky. You heard what the old tabby said, Potter’s here to look for something. Well, _where is everything hidden?_ ”

Goyle looked blank; Crabbe scratched his head. Draco grabbed their shoulders and pulled them closer confidentially, hissing, “The Room of Hidden Things, that’s where! That’s where Potter will be going. But he can’t until all of the students have left. So we should wait here, out of sight, until everyone has gone by. Then we’ll go and hide outside the room, let Potter get inside, and slip in after him. Then we can take him by surprise. He won’t stand a chance.”

Draco grinned at the other two. Goyle grinned back, but Crabbe frowned. “Wait—why’d we want to let ‘im get in first? Wouldn’t it be easier to get ‘im while ‘e’s trying to get in? I don’ get that part.”

Draco stepped even closer; his wand casually at his side. He shrugged, his wand hand moving idly. The other hand reached up to grab Crabbe’s shoulder again. The other two towered over Draco as he said, “Vince, Greg, Potter’s looking for something, right? Probably a weapon or something. If we just capture Potter, the Dark Lord’ll be happy, right? But if we capture both Potter AND his weapon, the Dark Lord will be even happier with us. So we need to let Potter inside first to find whatever it is. We need to let him inside first. And not move until I say. Right?”

Crabbe looked a little dazed and slowly nodded. “Let Potter inside first. Right.”

“And not do anything until I say it’s time to move. Right?”

Both boys chorused dully, “Right.”

The flow of silver images stopped; Neville said, “I didn’t recognize the wand movement myself, but I’m told it’s unmistakable to those familiar with the Confundus Charm. Of course, cast nonverbally, on two at once, it didn’t hold as well as Draco had intended. As you no doubt realize, Crabbe managed to break the Confundus when he remembered about the reward for catching Harry, and Goyle did when Draco lost his wand. Of course, neither Crabbe nor Goyle had ever seen the telltale wand movement; Draco was standing too close for them to see his hand. Had Riddle interrogated them under Legilimency afterward, all he’d have found was that they’d bought Draco’s argument, that by giving Harry a head start into the Room and letting him find the whatever, they’d be capturing both Potter AND his weapon, and pleasing the Dark Lord more.”

As they’d arranged, Harry broke in here. His plaintive tone, however, was not pre-arranged. “But this is the part that doesn’t make sense. I mean, I buy now that Malfoy was trying to help, but why just give me a head start?” He craned forward in his chair to address the question directly to Draco. “Why not just keep those two away from the Room of Requirement altogether, Malfoy? Tell them I’d be, I don’t know, searching the dungeons or something?”

Draco shut his eyes for a moment and shuddered. Then he sat up against his shackles and screamed at Harry, his face purple, “Because, you cretin, I thought the Room was the LAST place in Hogwarts that you would go! Literally the last! I knew fucking well that you’d gotten IN through the Room—how was I to know you were such a bloody idiot that you didn’t search it FIRST?”

Draco strained against his chains and ranted, “I assumed—more fool me—that you’d already searched the nice, safe, secured-from-Death-Eaters space thoroughly BEFORE you came sauntering out into the rest of the castle, paraded yourself before the fucking Carrows, and issued a bloody fucking invitation to the fucking DARK LORD to come invade a castle full of KIDS! What were you THINKING, Potter?”

Harry sat back hard in his seat and said weakly, “Um—but I didn’t know where the diadem was until _after_ I’d talked to the Grey Lady that night.”

Draco said furiously, “So why the fuck, having gotten in to the room through the exit, which possibility I carefully did NOT mention to Vince and Greg, did you COME OUT AGAIN? Just because you had to check up on your little girlfriend? And you lot didn’t even think to cast Revelo Hominem, did you, you’d have seen us right there and you had us outnumbered! And you didn’t even try to hold the room shut against us! What did you think, that because you were at Hogwarts you were SAFE?”

Harry, stung, said hotly, “I didn’t come out to check up on Ginny! I came out so we could change the room back to the room where everything is hidden! We HAD to come out again, to change the room!”

Draco stared at him incredulously and began to laugh. He sounded almost as bad as Professor Snape had. But unlike the professor, he didn’t cough bubbles of blood; instead he choked himself to silence and then wheezed, “So you’re basically telling me, Potter, that Vince died because YOU’RE a lackwit, I’M an incompetent who let a fucking Confundus Charm break, and I didn’t have the presence of mind to let Granger’s Stunner hit him. What a comfort.”

Draco hunched there in his chains, shivering, his eyes screwed tight. Harry said uncertainly, “Um—”

Draco snapped without opening his eyes, “For pity’s sake, Longbottom, this lackwit is YOUR friend. You explain it to him.”

Neville ventured, “Harry? You thought you had to go outside the room to change it?”

Harry nodded and said, “Well, yeah. I mean, the room can’t transform while there are still users inside it.”

Neville chewed his lip for a moment, looking at Draco in his chains. Then he said cautiously, “But Harry, remember how I told you we kept changing the room while the D.A. was using it as headquarters? Adding washrooms, and passages to Hogsmeade, and so forth? You can change the room any way you want while people are still inside it; you just have to get everyone inside to agree on the change. And sometimes it helps to get them to stand sort of out of the way.”

“Oh,” said Harry blankly.

Draco had gotten himself under control. He called up, “Professor? Since you obviously primed Longbottom here to use the phrase ‘head start’, would _you_ like to have the pleasure of explaining what you meant by that?”

The professor’s lips twitched slightly. Madam Pomfrey looked mulish for a moment, but when he lifted an eyebrow at her, she compressed her lips and cast the Sonorus again. The gravelly, amplified voice said slowly, “Mr. Malfoy, having inferred, unfortunately incorrectly, that Mr. Potter would be searching any part of the castle BUT the Room of Hidden Things for the object of interest, also inferred that Mr. Potter would make one of two choices once he found the object. Mr. Potter being a Gryffindor, the more natural course of events would be that Mr. Potter would take the invincible weapon or indestructible shield or whatever it was—bear in mind that Mr. Malfoy had naturally no idea of the actual object of Mr. Potter’s quest—and charge down to lead the battle against the Dark Lord. Should that occur, Messrs. Crabbe, Goyle, and Malfoy, guarding the Room of Hidden Things, would be safely out of the way, tied up doing something entirely useless to the Death Eaters, but which could be presented favorably to the Dark Lord, should the wrong side win.

“But Mr. Malfoy considered it remotely possible that Mr. Potter, having achieved his immediate quest, might find it necessary to make a strategic retreat, to regroup before he heroically led the final battle. So by Confunding Crabbe and Goyle, Mr. Malfoy ensured that Mr. Potter could reach the room unmolested to make his retreat. Then when Mr. Crabbe opened the Room of Hidden Things afterwards, Mr. Potter would, alas for their hopes, be long gone. A neat plan, in fact, had Mr. Potter cooperated by evincing a minimal degree of forethought.”

The professor paused and added blandly, “It can be quite… ah, I think the word is, disheartening … to try to protect someone who insists continually upon rushing into ill-considered actions. My sympathies are all with Mr. Malfoy.”

Harry stared at the professor and turned beetroot red. Draco shrugged and straightened again in the chair, dragging his old arrogance over himself like a well-beloved cloak. When he spoke, his drawl was firmly in place. “Yeah, well, it’s not like I was trying to protect Potter for my own amusement. A very little time in service to the Dark Lord was enough to convince me that him vanquished, even with me dead or in Azkaban, would be preferable. The Dark Lord was talented that way. Really, anyone sane would have thought the same—which let out my aunt, of course. Sorry, Mother.” He glanced briefly at Mrs. Malfoy.

Harry leaned forward, frowning, and said, “But your father didn’t think that way, at Malfoy Manor; he was still mad to capture me, to repair your family’s standing with Riddle.”

Malfoy retorted, “Yeah, well, my father was safe in Azkaban when the Dark Lord punished me for not killing Dumbledore. I knew then what we were all in for.”

Luna had been gazing vacantly at the elders since playing the last memory, ignoring the drama between Harry, Draco, and the professor. At Draco’s final words, though, she tilted her head and regarded the Slytherin like a Jobberknoll examining an unfamiliar insect. Then she opened her mouth to speak.

Neville realized abruptly that it was the first time she’d made her voice heard in the proceedings; she had responded to Neville’s instructions mutely, as though some essential part of her attention were elsewhere. Now her voice drifted lightly through the room, sweet and careless, as though she were talking about something inconsequential. “The Cruciatus was your punishment, I assume, Draco?”

Draco met the eyes of his family’s former prisoner. The grey eyes and the silvery ones were equally hard to read. “Naturally,” Draco answered with no inflection. “It was rather a favorite of his.”

Luna added, “Cast by your mother on you, and by you on her?”

The whole room froze.

Luna’s voice continued gently, “With the understanding, of course, that if you had refused or failed, the Dark Lord would have cast the curse himself instead—but _he_ wouldn’t have stopped until she was dead?”

Draco surged out of his chair towards Snape, screaming, “You told them!”

The manacles caught him, of course. Draco collapsed back in the chair, panting, his face twisted with betrayal as he stared at his professor. Professor Snape sat like a stone, as white as Neville had ever seen him. Beside him, Narcissa Malfoy looked as though she had been caught in a basilisk’s glare.

Luna interrupted the staring match. “No, _you_ told us, Draco. Just now, with your reaction. All Professor Snape ever said was what you did, that the Dark Lord had a positive genius for alienating his supporters. Only it made me think—well, it made me think about what Mr. Riddle did to my dad, making him choose between my life and my friends’. And that was just practical, really, just basic extortion, whereas Mr. Riddle would have been quite cross with your mum and Professor Snape for making that Unbreakable Vow. The pair of them setting _your_ life ahead of what Mr. Riddle must have considered their paramount duty to serve him. He didn’t understand love, they tell me, though he used it to torture people. He couldn’t have forgiven that normal people really do put their loved ones first.”

Luna’s voice went as insubstantial as mist, drifting over the courtroom, “So I just thought about what the Dark Lord could possibly do worse than what he did to my dad. If he really wanted to punish someone, I mean. And if he had access to a whole family. I didn’t like to think about it, but it was pretty easy to guess. I mean, I was there at Malfoy Manor. I did see how it was. And so I guessed what we must have left you to when we escaped, Draco. You were very brave.”

She glided over to Draco and touched his hand. “I’m sorry, Draco, truly. I wouldn’t have said anything, but some of the people in the court here still didn’t believe. They were still thinking that it was all a trick somehow. They had to understand why, to believe you. But Professor Snape never betrayed you, never. I did.” She smiled vaguely at him. “It’s okay to hate me for it.”

Draco didn’t benefit from Luna’s smile; he had shut his eyes and was huddled shaking in his manacles. After a time he muttered, almost to himself, “It wasn’t at all unlikely that he might have killed us all that night, every one of us, every person at the Manor, in a sheer temper tantrum, for letting Potter slip away again. He might have killed us all by accident, almost. When he was in one of his rages he would kill before thinking.”

Draco’s voice died. Luna’s clasp on his hand tightened, and she made a chirruping noise in her throat.

Draco whispered, “And that would have been so much better than what else he might do. What he might make us do.”

Harry, above them, breathed, “I could never have done that. Never. How could you?!”

Draco straightened in his chains and regarded Harry bleakly. “Lucky, lucky Gryffindor, to have the luxury of choices the rest of us don’t. The Cruciatus can kill, you know. Or didn’t you? But it takes a long time. A _long_ time. Longer,” his eyes slanted to Neville, “than what happened to _his_ parents. Longer, even, if the caster knows how to draw it out. To keep the heart beating when it should stop.

“Do you seriously tell me you’d have let that happen to _your mother,_ Potter? Or do you mean that you wouldn’t have taken the Dark Lord’s threats seriously? That you’d have gambled that he wouldn’t have done it? I’m very glad that you didn’t have the chance to test him, in that case. He killed _your_ mother straight off, Potter. You were lucky.”

Draco’s voice cut off with a gasp. There was a very long silence.

 

Neville gathered himself finally to speak. “Look, can we make an end to this? Can anyone here possibly doubt the case we’ve made? Yes, Draco Malfoy voluntarily joined Tom Riddle’s followers and both committed and attempted crimes in Riddle’s service. And then he revolted against him, absolutely, and worked against him to the best of his ability—his HIGH ability—suffering considerably in the process. By my count, Harry would have been killed five times over but for Draco’s direct intervention: at Malfoy Manor, first by delaying Harry’s identification and then by facilitating Harry’s escape; in the Room of Requirement, by Confunding Crabbe so he didn’t just kill Harry in the corridor, by alerting Harry to their presence, and by stopping Crabbe and Goyle when they were going to cast the Avada Kedavra at Harry.”

With unerring timing, Luna hit the Pensieve, voice only, and Draco’s voice screamed, ‘Don’t kill him! DON’T KILL HIM!”

Neville looked at his elders. “Not to mention he also saved Ron and Hermione, at least three times each. The last of which, I hope you note, was totally unrelated to the goal of saving Harry. I mean, even if you want to argue that he only saved Harry for selfish reasons, because Harry was the only hope of defeating Voldemort, there was no need for him to stop Crabbe from throwing another Descendus and burying Ron and Hermione.”

Draco drawled, “You underestimate me, Longbottom. Granger was the brains of Potter’s little group, Weasley the backup wand; I wouldn’t have wanted Potter to take on that maniac without his little sidekicks in support. Purest self-interest, I assure you.”

Neville turned on him. “Shut it, you! I’m summing the case in your DEFENSE.”

Draco, shockingly, grinned at him. “But you need to address the counter-arguments, Gryffindor.”

Neville turned his back on Draco and faced the chief witch. It took him a moment to catch his train of thought. “Not to mention that he—Draco—protected Dumbledore’s Army for the entire year. If he’d gone to the Carrows with what he knew, twenty to forty kids, depending on when he did it, would probably have been tortured to death. You all KNOW what he did. And you know now that he faced, and took, the fucking Cruciatus, to do it!”

Neville’s voice dropped. “The Cruciatus isn’t a theoretical spell to me, like it is to most of you. You know about my parents, what it did to them. Did you also know that Bellatrix Lestrange cast it on ME, two years ago, to try to get Harry to surrender the Prophecy to the Dark Lord? And I… I … managed to tell Harry not to do it, not to give in…. And then the Carrows, but Professor Snape had cast wards to diminish the impact somewhat, and the Carrows were weak wizards anyhow. Riddle was not. So I know, I know, what it takes to face it again. Not the first time, when you don’t know what it feels like, but AGAIN. Because that’s what Draco did. He knew what the Cruciatus was like. And he faced it. Repeatedly. To protect Harry. To protect Ron and Hermione. To protect ME, and all the students in Dumbledore’s Army. To destroy Voldemort.

“I’m going to ask you in a minute to vote. To choose to release Draco Malfoy, all charges against him dropped, in recognition of the courage that it took for Draco to secretly work against the Dark Lord to the immense benefit of us all. I remind you again that Harry Potter would almost certainly have been dead and rotted, Voldemort’s Horcruxes intact, were it not for Draco’s valor and self-sacrifice.

“Or, if your, ah, conscience, so moves you, to vote for Draco’s continued imprisonment, on the grounds of the crimes that he had undeniably committed prior to his reformation.”

Neville raked his elders with a cold stare. “But I’ll be watching, and anyone who votes for Draco’s continued imprisonment WILL talk to me later. Or, if you prefer, to Professor Snape.” Neville smiled as a wave of wizards and witches blanched. “Or to Luna.” No one flinched at the last name, and Neville laughed outright. Professor Snape was right; these were fools.

Smiling, Neville continued, “You’ll get to tell us how many times YOU endured the Cruciatus to help defeat Lord Voldemort. And your count, if you vote against Draco, had damned well better compare favorably with his. I did mention, did I not, that the screaming when the Malfoys were punished because Draco helped Harry to escape went on for half an hour?”

Neville looked around. Professor Snape nodded firmly at Neville, and then let his cold gaze sweep over the Wizengamot. Luna smiled vaguely upon everyone from back behind her Pensieves. Harry raised his chin belligerently; he looked ready to take on the whole assembly. In Malfoy’s defense, which was an unsettling thought. Hermione had tucked her head against Ron’s shoulder and was shuddering faintly; Ron was squeezing her. But his eyes were hard and clear as he met Neville’s. He nodded once. The D.A. members behind them all had their right arms in the air, silently displaying their charmed Galleons.

Most of the witches and wizards in the Wizengamot, Neville’s respected elders, were looking down and shuffling.

Finally, Neville looked at Draco. Draco slowly straightened under Neville’s gaze, until he sat in his shackles like a wrongly-imprisoned prince. Not that Draco was exactly _wrongly_ imprisoned. Neville held Draco’s grey gaze while he called for the vote. “Those in favor of pardoning Draco Malfoy unconditionally, in recognition of the valor, loyalty to those he loved, intelligence, and cunning he displayed, and the service he did us all, in opposing Lord Voldemort to his own extreme danger and detriment, please signify by raising your right hand.”

Harry wasn’t the only one who could take private lessons from Dumbledore’s portrait.

Neville tore himself from Draco’s eyes to regard the slowly-advancing tide of raised hands. Neville waited until there was no further motion, gulped and said, “Thank you.” The arms dropped as though the floor were charmed to drag them down.

“Those opposed? Those who consider that Draco should instead be further punished?”

Neville waited. There was a very soft rustling, like rats scurrying for cover.

Neville gulped again. “By acclamation, then, Draco Malfoy is cleared of all charges and released with no stain on his character—”

He knew that there was more to it, some formula he was supposed to be saying as the case-maker, but he could remember nothing more.

A tumult of babbling broke out in the visitor and press section, but Neville saw only one person. Draco stared as the golden manacles slid back into the arms of the chair as though they had never held him.

Neville closed his eyes in momentary dizziness. When he opened them again, Draco was in the stands, stiffly enduring his mother’s sobbing embrace, and regarding the dark figure sitting motionless beside her.

The black shoulders were painfully straight, but Neville recognized the tilt of the head as a sign of exhaustion. By her apparent agitation, so did Madam Pomfrey.

Somewhere nearby there were flashes going off and loud voices; Hermione’s said suddenly in Neville’s ear, “Neville, you can be my barrister any day!”

Then Luna’s cool hand touched his. “Neville, don’t you think we should rescue them? The professor looks quite exhausted, wouldn’t you say? Let’s get them out of here.”

But Harry got there first. Harry’s glance shied away from the black figure, skittered uncertainly over Mrs. Malfoy’s slender form, and finally settled on the shabby grey-robed one. Harry took a breath and said, “But I still don’t understand one thing, Malfoy. So if you wanted me to defeat Voldemort, fine, you had to keep me alive. I get that part, and thanks, for what that’s worth. But why did you stop Crabbe from casting the Cruciatus on me? Why did you care about that?”

Mrs. Malfoy handed her son a green traveling cloak embroidered heavily with silver; Draco made a business of settling it around his shoulders, entirely hiding the shabby prison robe. Finally, when the rich folds were adjusted to his satisfaction and the heavy silver brooch was fastened, Draco looked back at Harry and shrugged. He fingered the wand that had been shoved into his hand—almost certainly not his original one, but the thought counted for a lot. “The Cruciatus usually knocks people down for a bit, if not out altogether. Couldn’t risk it.”

Luna pushed forward through a gap. She tilted her head to fix Draco with those gooseberry eyes. “Draco, it’s not a weakness, you know—or maybe you don’t---not to want people to be hurt if you can stop it. Even people you don’t especially like. The professor doesn’t.”

Draco ducked his head, and his cheeks and ears turned a dull pink. He darted a quick, furious glance at Luna, and then another at the silent black figure. He opened his mouth, met the professor’s dark gaze, and shut his mouth again. His hair had grown out a bit, raggedly, in the last month; he looked up finally through the fringes at Harry. “Um, yeah. What she said. And, Potter, … ah, thanks too. For getting rid of him for us all.”

Harry stuck his hand out. Draco stared as though he’d never seen such an object. Then, hesitantly, he shook it.

Madam Pomfrey broke the circle of silence within the surrounding hubbub. “Professor Snape should never have been up for so long. Who will help me escort him to the Floo?”

*

The photo of Harry shaking Draco’s hand was on the front page of the Prophet the next day, with a headline screaming, “DEATH EATER CLEARED. HARRY POTTER’S SECRET HELPER!”

The subhead, unfortunately, bawled, “THE HIDDEN PRICE OF HELPING HARRY!” next to a picture of the sobbing Narcissa Malfoy embracing her son. Neville really didn’t want to read what they would have printed under that heading.

The one photo that Neville did like showed Harry, Hermione, and Ron breaking their way through the crowds. Madam Pomfrey levitated the chair from behind; the grim black figure was flanked by Luna and Neville on one side, by Draco and his mother on the other. The D.A. followed behind like an honor guard. When the flashes had gone off the professor had looked for a moment like he might explode too, until Draco’s mum had leaned over and said something in his ear.

The journalists hadn’t heard what Mrs. Malfoy said, but Neville had. “Propaganda for re-establishing our house’s credit, Severus. Let them help us.” The professor had looked at her sharply, swallowed, and stared straight ahead, unspeaking.

Epilogue: <http://community.livejournal.com/severusbigbang/47106.html#cutid1>


	5. Epilogue

Neville had no more business here. He knew that. He pushed open the door anyhow.

Draco was sitting, rocklike, beside the professor’s bed. The bed was inclined as though to hold its occupant up for conversation, but both men were sunk in silence when Neville made his way through the door. The professor and the former prisoner looked equally exhausted, ground down to almost nothing. Both too were still clad in their protective coverings: Snape in his mourning black, Malfoy in the green-and-silver cloak his mother had thrown over his prison robes at the end of the hearing.

Neville regarded them. Snape and Draco. The murderer and the torturer. The ones he could trust. 

They looked back blankly.

Neville had no idea what he was there for. But he couldn’t leave.

Finally Neville’s mouth pushed itself open, spilling out words he wouldn’t have predicted. “Professor Snape. Your Veesiar spells---how you developed them even though you can’t cast them yourself now—have you ever looked into, considered, healing? I mean, researching that? I know you were an expert on healing immediate curse damage, but, I mean, long term?”

The professor frowned at a little at Neville’s non sequitur. After the excitement and exertions of the day before, exhaustion seemed to drape over him like a Lethifold. A part of Neville wanted to pat the poor man on his shoulder and tuck him in, to let him sleep for the century or so he had surely earned. Guarded by Draco, yes, that would be all right. As long as he had--only if Neville could be certain that the professor had—Dreamless Sleep. 

That’s what Neville should be trying to give him. Instead his tongue bumbled, “It’s my mum, you see. The healers at St. Mungo’s say she doesn’t recognize anything, doesn’t know anything. Can’t pull up old memories, can’t form new ones. Basically, can’t … can’t register anything. Too traumatized.”

Neither exhausted face flickered. 

After a moment Neville mumbled, “You know what happened to her.”

Now Draco’s silver head turned away from Neville. 

The other head dipped, long black hair swinging to hide the face in a gesture which Neville suddenly realized to have been long practiced. 

Neville looked from one hidden face to the other. He offered, “Only, see—every time I visit, she tries to give me things. My Mum does. She picks up trash from the floor—she hoards apple peelings from her lunch— to give to me. To me. Only to me…. Only I’m not a baby any more, not her baby that she knew seventeen years ago, back when she was sane. My dad is … well, he’s gone, that’s all, he responds to nothing, that anyone can see. But my mum does. She responds to me. Only she responds to me now, you see, not to me then, not to the baby I was then.” 

Neville pleaded, helplessly, to the two hidden faces, “So doesn’t it sound like they’re wrong, the healers? They say that she can no longer understand change. That she’s not really here. But doesn’t it seem that there’s some part of her that does recognize me, me changed? That understands that I, me, is also the baby she once loved? Because she gives things to me. To me now. But if she does, then, then, there must still be a part of her that registers change? That is still remembering, still forming memories? So maybe there’s a part of her that could be saved, healed? Don’t you think?”

He hated how his voice had risen, tight, almost panicked.

Professor Snape murmured almost inaudibly, “Where the mind would flee in pain….”

The professor looked over at Draco from behind his hair, who gazed back. Neither regarded Neville. The black eyes were hooded, distant, calculating. Draco’s grey eyes had gone glassy with memory. He’d drawn his wand, but he didn’t cast anything. Instead he turned the stick over and over in his hands, unseeing, while he met Snape’s abstracted stare. His thumb moved over the smooth wood in an involuntary caress. Finally Draco broke his staring match with Snape to look down at his own hands, which were trembling a little. 

Professor Snape returned his black gaze to Neville, throwing his hair back a little to see. “How much of the damage was organic?”

It took Neville a moment to translate the question. “They say—they say they healed that part right away.” 

“Could you get us her treatment records? All of them?” 

Neville nodded immediately. He didn’t care, actually, whether he could. He would, if that would help at all.

“If she’s capable of recognition … “ Draco mused. He broke off suddenly and looked around at the Hospital Wing disapprovingly, silver hair flying as he shook his head. “If she is responding at all to real stimuli, and to change…. Well, a hospital ward isn’t actually terribly… reassuring, is it, Professor? It smells wrong, like sickness, like danger…. Wouldn’t it be better to have something … more, more welcoming, to lure one back to?”

A black eyebrow rose. “Smells wrong…? An interesting point. Scent connects viscerally with the deepest parts of the mind. As do tactile impressions and taste, much more than auditory or visual input. Though those too might be manipulated for therapeutic purposes….”

A pale hand scrabbled impatiently on the bedside table for a parchment and a quill.

The professor turned suddenly on Neville, snapping, “Longbottom! Don’t get your hopes up prematurely.”

But it was already far too late. 

The professor’s eyes had narrowed, and Draco’s chin had lifted at the challenge.


End file.
